Historical Marker
Old Roscoe, Snyder & Pacific Railroad Engine No. 5
Snyder, Scurry County · Texas
Erected 1967
A steam engine in a park marks the end of an era. The Handbook of Texas says diesel locomotives replaced steam on the Roscoe, Snyder and Pacific between 1950 and 1955, and that the last steam engine was retired to a Snyder park. It also records that in 1916 the railroad owned three locomotives and two passenger cars. Baldwin Locomotive Works, which began in Philadelphia in 1825, became the world's largest builder of steam locomotives and built its last of more than 70,000 in 1951.
What the plaque says
Old Roscoe, Snyder & Pacific Railroad Engine No. 5 A Baldwin locomotive of the Roscoe, Snyder & Pacific--the railroad that reached here in 1908 with passenger and freight service, and contributed greatly to growth of city and area. This engine (a coal burner converted later to fuel oil) was built in 1920 in Philadelphia; placed in park in 1956. (1967)
Where it stands
32.70636, -100.88908 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Scurry County Museum — 2.4 miSnyder's county museum on the Western Texas College campus, with the rifle used to shoot the white buffalo, an 1878 chuckwagon and the millionth barrel of the Canyon Reef oil boom.
- Heart of West Texas Museum — 22 miColorado City's museum in a restored downtown house, from a mammoth dug up at Lake Champion in 2001 to an Ice Age bison and the wartime telegrams sent to a local family.
- National WASP WWII Museum — 30 miHangar 1 at Avenger Field in Sweetwater, where the women of the WASP trained to fly every aircraft in the Army's arsenal in World War II, then waited thirty-three years to be called veterans.