By Eric Berger
Years after BNSF engineer Sam Bailey retired to the Missouri hometown he shared with Walt Disney, an SD40 he operated early in his career would join him there. The railroad recently saluted Bailey for working to restore the engine after its donation to the Walt Disney Hometown Museum in Marceline, Mo., but that effort is an ongoing one as he is now preparing to raise funds for the next phase of work.
Nestled deep in rural north-central Missouri, Marceline is a small town that once boasted a moderate-sized yard with a coaling and servicing tower for steam engines. As is the case in similar towns across the nation’s heartland, just a handful of tracks around the outline offer a hint of how the yard might have looked like with tracks from side to side, bustling with the activity of an ATSF division point. One vestige of that era that still draws a certain breed of railfan to Marceline is the survival of its concrete coaling tower.
North of the yard near the center of town lies the Santa Fe station where Disney arrived at the age of four. It remains the centerpiece of the community as home to the Walt Disney Hometown Museum. Since he was a self-professed lover of trains, the location couldn’t be more appropriate. Moreover, he might have found grist for a movie in the story of Sam Bailey, who was reunited with BNSF 5008 on the grounds of the museum with the assistance of now-retired BNSF yardmaster John Montgomery in 2017. Montgomery also helped arrange the donation of Burlington SD9 BNSF 1727 to Brookfield, Mo., around the same time.
Bailey was just 19 in 1968 when he hired on as a hostler at Argentine Yard in Kansas City, from which he would be based for most of his career. He mostly ran trains on the Marceline Subdivision following his promotion from hostler to engineer. Built by EMD in 1966, the engine was just two-years-old and still numbered ATSF 1708 the first time he operated it. It would later be renumbered 5008, the number it carried until the 1996 BNSF merger, after which it became BNSF 6308. It was a locomotive Bailey would come to know well, operating it many times over the course of his 41 years with the railroad. It was upgraded to SD40u with an addition to the electrical cabinet in 1981, but never received a full Dash 2 conversion.
The engine was eventually pulled from service in 2009, just two months prior to Bailey’s retirement. She would spend her final years on deadlines in Temple, Texas, and Wichita, Kansas. At that time, the letters “GN” were spray-painted under 6308, due to the use by BNSF of Great Northern reporting marks to denote that a locomotive is soon to leave the property and make its number available for use on a newer engine.
After nearly a decade awaiting disposition, the engine arrived in Marceline in 2017, whereupon Bailey set about the task of single-handedly restoring the engine as ATSF 5008, its number for the longest period. The first thing he had to do was drain the fuel in its tank. “Before they sent the engine to Marceline, someone topped off the fuel tank,” he told Railfan & Railroad with a laugh.
Bailey spent the next two and a half years achieving that goal.
“It’s all about discovery,” Bailey said. “Every time I sanded or removed paint, I discovered something new about the locomotive, like how former engine numbers had been etched into the side on the rear below the lights. I loved every bit of this project, even the obstacles. I grew up with this locomotive.”
During the past year, Bailey repainted the handrails on the engine but is now in need of an estimated $7,000 to address its sun-bleached roof. He invites anyone interested in the engine to follow his progress by joining his “Santa Fe SD40 5008” Facebook group. Anyone planning to visit Marceline can reach him through the page to arrange a personal tour. He said donations for the roof paint can be made to the Walt Disney Hometown Museum, “but be sure to specify that it is to be used on Santa Fe 5008 or they might use it for something else.”