A.T. & S.F. No. 5000 "Madam Queen"
Amarillo, Potter County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A star of the age of steam transportation. Pride of Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, which came into Texas in 1886, has its Panhandle and Santa Fe General Offices in Amarillo, and served much of this area. Manufactured at the cost of $133,902.80 by world-famed Baldwin Locomotive Works, according to designs made by Santa Fe engineers. "Pilot" locomotive of its type, a model and champion in power and speed. When this locomotive went into service in December 1930, Santa Fe (like other American railways) had ceased to name engines for officers or celebrities, but called them by number. This was No. 5000. But one of the first engineers to steer it over the rails affectionately called it "Madam Queen", for a character in radio's popular "Amos and Andy" show. Gallant, faithful, swift, and strong, "Madam Queen" ran for more than 1,750,000 miles. Prior to diesels, this was the greatest of Santa Fe's locomotives. Its tender held 20,000 gallons of water and 7,107 gallons of fuel. Locomotive and tender weighed 662,500 pounds. Tractive force was 93,000 pounds. Boiler pressure, 300 pounds per square inch. Retired from service, November 1953, the "Queen" was given to City of Amarillo on April 19, 1957. (1965)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When locomotive No. 5000 entered Santa Fe service in December 1930, the railroad had long since stopped naming engines for people—but an early engineer nicknamed it "Madam Queen" after a character on the radio hit "Amos and Andy," and it stuck. Built by the Baldwin Locomotive Works as a powerful pilot model, the great steam engine ran more than 1.75 million miles before diesels made it obsolete. Retired in 1953, the "Queen" was presented to the City of Amarillo in 1957.
Why it matters
"Madam Queen" is a monument to the age of steam that knit the American West together, and to the railroads that made towns like Amarillo hubs of a continental economy.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Fort Worth and Denver City Railway, First Railroad through the Texas Panhandle
Amarillo, TX
Chartered by Fort Worth citizens in 1873 but delayed by that year's financial panic, the Fort Worth and Denver City Railway became the first railroad to cross the Texas Panhandle. Grading began in 1881 under famed engineer G. M. Dodge, and as crews pushed the rails northwest, their camps became towns—Amarillo among them, born in 1887. The line's completion in 1888 opened a through route to Denver and helped transform the old buffalo range into an economy of cattle, grain, and petroleum.
Amarillo
Amarillo, TX
When the Fort Worth and Denver City Railroad pushed through the Panhandle in 1887, Colorado City merchants led by J. T. Berry platted Amarillo to serve their South Plains trade, and cowboys elected it the seat of newly organized Potter County. Ranchers J. F. Glidden and H. B. Sanborn of the Frying Pan Ranch soon lured residents to a new townsite addition, and from 1892 to 1897 Amarillo was the nation's largest rural cattle-shipping point. Sanborn's maneuvering to win a key rail junction in 1898 sealed the town's future as the commercial center of the Texas Panhandle.
Henry Bradley Sanborn
Amarillo, TX
A New York native, Henry Bradley Sanborn came to Texas in 1875 as sales agent for barbed-wire inventor Joseph Glidden, and together they founded the vast Frying Pan Ranch in 1881 to prove that wire fencing could tame the open range. When a rival site won the county seat, the undaunted Sanborn developed his own townsite nearby, luring residents there after heavy rains flooded the original and later securing the rail connections that guaranteed Amarillo's future. On this spot stood his home, offices, stables for matched coach horses, and even a deer park.
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad, The Amarillo Story
Amarillo, TX
The arrival of a railroad across the Panhandle gave rise to Amarillo, made county seat of Potter County in 1887, and for a decade the town enjoyed a trade monopoly over the South Plains, ranking as the nation's largest rural cattle-shipping point in the 1890s. When a rival routing threatened to bypass it in 1898, citizens persuaded the Santa Fe to make Amarillo the terminus of its new line; the railroad then moved its headquarters there and, by 1908, folded the town into its transcontinental main line. Branch lines followed, cementing Amarillo as the commercial hub of the High Plains.