The locomotive was constructed in September 1917 as one of the last S-10 class 0-6-0 Baldwin Locomotive Work engines.
Much like the locomotive at Dennis the Menace Park, the Harvey West Park engine was built relatively late in its run as a oil-fueled yard switcher. Southern Pacific 1298 (Harvey West Park, Santa Cruz)
A community action group is currently rallying to restore the engine to playground use, which can be found at. The locomotive and tender are maintained by the City of Monterey. Since then, the city council of Monterey has created a subcommittee to find a way to reopen the train to public access, although a solution has yet to be reached. It was the last playground locomotive in the state to close access. įor fifty years, children were able to climb on, over, and under the locomotive with virtually no restrictions in place, but new mandatory safety standards for playground safety force the city to fence the locomotive and tender and deny the public access in 2012. The park officially opened on November 17, 1956, and SP1285 served as the centerpiece of this new facility.Ĭhildren climbing on SP1285 at Dennis the Menace Park, c. Ketcham, a resident of Carmel who died in 2001, had helped plan the park and donated money to get it built as a children's playground in honor of his comic's theme. After installation, the new play structure was dedicated February 15, 1956, with Hank Ketcham, creator of Dennis the Menace, in attendance beside the city's mayor and representatives of Southern Pacific.
The task was not easy and the engineers used a 300-horsepower tank retriever to move the train after carefully surveying the streets between the track and the installation site. The engine was installed by Company C of the 84th Army Engineers from Fort Ord since the locomotive weighed 155,000 lbs and its tender 50,000 lbs. The locomotive and its tender were donated to the City of Monterey in January 1956. SP1285 at the San Francisco freight yard moving box cars, April 1953. During its years as an active locomotive, SP1285 operated at the San Francisco freight yard. It was classified by Southern Pacific as an oil-fired yard switcher, which means it remained at a freight yard to move rolling stock around to make it easier for the larger, long-distance trains to pick up stock on its way through a station. The first static locomotive installed at a park in the Monterey Bay area was a Lima Locomotive Works S-14 class 0-6-0 switcher locomotive build in 1924 for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Southern Pacific 1285 (Dennis the Menace Park, Monterey) Three of those locomotives settled around the Monterey Bay, two of which still remain at those parks. However, Southern Pacific remembered the communities through which its trains went and donated many of their old trains to municipal parks across the country. But when steam was phased out in the mid-1950s, most of the locomotives went to scrap, the cost of maintaining them too expensive and their worth to the railroad negated by the more efficient diesel locomotives. Throughout its history, the Southern Pacific Railroad maintained thousands of steam locomotives.
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