A.T. & S.F. No. 5000 "Madam Queen"

No. 5000 began a new kind of Santa Fe freight engine. Baldwin delivered it in 1930 as a 2-10-4, the wheel arrangement called the Texas type, and it hauled freight on the Pecos division. It was the railroad's only Texas type for eight years, until ten more were ordered in 1936, and in 1940 it was converted from coal to oil. In 2005 it was moved from the depot to a site across from the Civic Center. The city proposed selling it in 2016, and plans to restore it have not come to fruition.

What the plaque says

A.T. & S.F. No. 5000 "Madam Queen" 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)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Route 66 Sixth Street Historic District — 2.1 mi
  Thirteen blocks of Amarillo's streetcar suburb that Route 66 turned into a roadside strip, from the 1922 Nat to Texaco, Phillips and Dutch Mill stations, now shops and bars.
• Helium Centennial Time Columns Monument — 4.8 mi
  Four sealed time capsules raised in Amarillo in 1968 for helium's centennial, in the city that for years produced almost all the world's commercial helium from the Cliffside field.
• Cadillac Ranch — 9.0 mi
  Ten Cadillacs from 1949 to 1963 planted nose down in a pasture west of Amarillo by the Ant Farm collective in 1974, on private land where visitors are let in to paint them.
• Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum — 17 mi
  The Panhandle's great collection, some two million objects behind a 1933 Art Deco hall carved with cattle brands, closed to the public since March 2025 over fire-safety violations.

More markers nearby

• Fort Worth and Denver City Railway, First Railroad through the Texas Panhandle — steps away
• Henry B. Sanborn — steps away
• Amarillo — 0.3 mi
• Henry Bradley Sanborn — 0.3 mi