Like Southern Railway, Santa Fe dieselized earlier in 1953 because of worn out locos, BY 1953 Santa Fe steam locos were pretty worn out and Santa Fe wanted out of steam for good and go all-diesel .
I think the water supply problem weighed more heavily on the Santa Fe than you might think. Santa Fe had a lot of locos that weren't worn out. They just chose to spend money on new diesel locos that didn't need water rather than recondition good steam locomotives that did.
Chuck
Worn out locos wasn't the reason. Santa Fe wanted to dieselize as early as they could due to the lack of reliable water sources in the west. Something the Southern didn't have to deal with.
And many of the Santa Fe steamers were not worn out when they were retired. Several likely could have gone on for many more years. Due to the success of hauling freight with their FTs, F3, and F7s, several steam locos were retired somewhat early.
WWII was also a major reason why Santa Fe had steam locos as long as they did. Due to war time restrictions, diesels could not be produced in enough numbers to fully dieselize the Santa Fe. In fact because they couldn't get more diesels (FTs), the Santa Fe reluctantly had to order more steam locomotives to help with the war time traffic increases.
Makes one wonder if WWII never happened then the Santa Fe would have had a lot more FTs and fully dieselized around a decade earlier then they ultimately did.
Matt from Anaheim, CA and Bayfield, COClick Here for my model train photo website