A look at the planned Route 66 Station August 9, 2006
Posted by Ron in Attractions, History, Railroad.trackback
I’ve acquired computer artist’s renderings of the Route 66 Station park, which will be in the 3900 block Southwest Boulevard in Tulsa, in a current vacant lot cross the road from Daniel Webster High School.
Route 66 Station will be funded by the Tulsa County Vision 2025 sales tax. I’m told it should be bidded out and under contract by the end of the year. It’s hoped it not only will be a nice tourist attraction, but it will lead people to other tourist attractions in the area.
First off is an overall aeriel rendering of the Route 66 Station:
The centerpiece of the park is a Frisco Meteor 4500 steam locomotive. The first picture is an actual image of the train a similar-looking Frisco Meteor 4501; the second image is the Frisco 4501 in the artist’s rendering.
There also will be a replica of a section of the 11th Street Bridge, aka the Cyrus Avery Bridge, that carried Route 66 over the Arkansas River. This bridge section, however, will be just 14 feet wide, reflecting the original width of the original road. (But there are old sections of “sidewalk highway” Route 66 near Miami, Okla., that are just 9 feet wide.)
This display will pay tribute to McIntyre Airport, which was on Route 66 and served as Tulsa’s first airport. The display will plug the new Tulsa Air and Space Museum.
This is a rendering of a replica of the historic Council Oak. I’m not so sure I care for this, since the real one is just a short drive away. A small “replica” oak seems to diminish the genuine tree somehow.
So, I gather Tulsa has some sort of arrangement with the Age of Steam Railroad Museum in Dallas, where that steam engine currently (according to the museum web site) resides?
People are going to come to Tulsa to see replicas of things that people don’t go to see in Tulsa in the first place? From the first picture, I thought that maybe we were finally going to get a passenger train again in Tulsa. Now THAT would be exciting. This? Not so much.
Actually, this train has been in the Tulsa area for about 50 years. It was donated to the city in 1954. It was in Mohawk Park until about 1980, then moved to a local railroad yard.
Last I heard, it was behind a building on Lansing Avenue and Archer Street in Tulsa, getting cleaned up for its eventual move.
Update: I just noticed the discrepancy in the original photo of the train. That’s the photo of the Southwest Tulsa people gave to me; I didn’t see the difference until you pointed it out. I guess they used the wrong photo.
Anyway, Dallas has the Frisco Meteor 4501. Tulsa has the Frisco Meteor 4500. That is something I’m sure about.
Yes! The “Meteor” Steam locomotive 4500 and tender is sitting on a siding in Northeast corner of downtown tulsa. The engine was painted blue but is beginning to rust again and the work that has been done will have to be redone. The big engine and tender have been moved like an orphan child several times since it lost its home in Mohawk Park. I really don’t know why it was moved from out from under its shelter at the park until a more suitable location was found. Tulsans will be lucky if the engine and tender survive the ordeal since it is far down on the priority list. At one point the locomotive was in danger of being cut up for scrap and may still be. What a loss that would be!! We,Tulsans, seem to care nothing about artifacts of Tulsas history. Another example was the B-24 Liberator Bomber that languished on the Northeast side of Tulsa International airport for several years. The B-24 was one of nearly 19 thousand built for the war effort during WWII. Over two thousand were built here in Tulsa during WWII. The aircraft was about to be cut up by a local scrap metal dealer until the U.S. Airforce stepped in to save it for a display at Barksdale Airforce base where it now resides in its full glory. What a corner stone display the restored B-24 would have made at the new Tulsa Air & Space Museum. My opinion is that a real effort should be made to find a good home for the locomotive before someone in our glorious city government decides that the city does not or will not allocate the money necessary to bring 4500 back to a good display condition. My hat is off to those that have worked so hard to bring this enormous engine and tender back from the brink of extinction but lets face it with the economy such as it is in “T” town steam locomotives are far down on the list of priority’s!! If you don’t believe me all one has to do is take a tour of the downtown area and see all of the old industrial buildings closed, boarded up and generally in dilapidated condition. Many of the streets in the Tulsa downtown and mid town area are so rough I challenge anyone to try and drink a cup of coffee while traversing the streets of Tulsa. Do we really want to spend almost 800 million dollars in the middle of the river,and that is only a start, just so a handful of developers and the privileged few can enjoy at the expense of all tulsans. That should just about cover it for this evening.
[...] Oklahoma Centennial funds will be used to help build the Red Fork Derrick observation deck at the Route 66 Station park in west Tulsa, reports the Tulsa [...]
[...] 28, 2008 · No Comments A federal grant could put a visitors’ center next door to the Route 66 transportation theme park being built in the 3900 block of Southwest Boulevard. “It just makes a lot of sense for people to [...]