There is a beast sleeping north of the Amarillo Civic Center Complex that once breathed fire and belched smoke as it roared down the Llano Estacado — one of many that roamed the plains. This creature was no vicious monster of mythology; rather, this was a 877,000-pound machine made of iron and steel. In her prime, she was the height of technological innovation on the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad (ATSF). The beast has a number, ATSF 5000. More famously perhaps, it has a name that reflects its high status and the respect she garnered from the people who worked on it, “Madame Queen.”
Much like the dragons of JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the Madame Queen and her steam-powered siblings are now relegated to legends passed down across generations. Their days have long since passed, but their stories remain an integral part of the history of the High Plains. What follows is a brief history of the Madame Queen, the once-reigning monarch of the ATSF Railroad and a perennial reminder of just how much human transit and the movement of goods in this country has changed over the past century.
In the late 1920s, railroads all across the country were hard at work ramping up the power of their locomotives. The demand for powerful steam engines to haul the agricultural and mineral resources extracted in the hinterlands increased in kind, especially as these goods were destined for disparate urban, industrial centers experiencing unprecedented population booms. The ATSF, in an effort to remain competitive, set out to work on the next generation of locomotives that it hoped would set the standard for freight hauling for the next decade…