Crews begin removing train from Modesto’s Beard Brook Park

Crews have begun removing a 650-ton locomotive with tender from Modesto’s Beard Brook Park, where the train has sat since 1960.

The Santa Fe No. 2921 train once was a popular attraction for kids who loved to climb on it and play engineer. But after a cyclone fence went up around it in the mid-1970s, it sat neglected and deteriorating. And since the mid-’90s there’s been on-and-off talk of moving the massive steam engine out of the park.

Beard Brook Park, between South Morton Boulevard and Dry Creek just southeast of downtown, long has been populated by the homeless. Modesto city officials have considered ways to generate more recreational activity there and reclaim it as a regional park.

In May, plans were presented to the Modesto City Council to relocate the train.

Nathan Houx, the city’s acting manager of the Parks, Recreation and Neighborhoods Department, said Thursday the city has approved a plan to move the train to the Amtrak station on Held Avenue near Parker Road in Modesto.

The project to relocate the train is funded by Pacific Gas and Electric Co., which has also agreed to pay the costs of creating a dog park in the same location where the train sat for more than five decades. Houx said the dog park is expected to be finished in the fall.

The crews hired by PG&E have placed the locomotive on a trailer and will do the same with the tender. Houx said they will drive the locomotive and the tender separately overnight to the Amtrak station to avoid causing serious traffic problems.

The city will take on the maintenance plan for the locomotive, ensuring it remains in proper condition in its new location as a tribute to its historical significance to the city.

No. 2921 is one of only six of its kind to survive from among 30 built in 1943 and 1944 – some of the last steam engines ever built.

In the 1950s, Santa Fe started donating some of the old engines to towns with railroad histories, towns that wanted to put the engines on display.

Modesto was given this train in 1960, according to Modesto Bee archives.

This story was originally published July 13, 2017 at 11:29 AM with the headline "Crews begin removing train from Modesto’s Beard Brook Park."