Sante Fe Depot – Holcomb

 The Holcomb Depot was retired in 1973 after the Sante Fe Railroad submitted an application to the Kansas Corporation Commission after many years of service. At that point, the station was only open for half-days with no agency service. It was just a year later the somber depot was purchased by Charles Anstaett a “railroad buff in the extreme”. He had moved the depot to his 8,000-acre family ranch along with the defunct Deerfield Depot that closed at the same time. They had hopes of restoring both with all the original contents. He has huge plans for the depots and all of the railroad gear he had acquired over the years and wanted to turn them into fully restored museums with one being a ticket office, one being a passenger depot, and the other to hold a modern train set he had been building for years. For one reason or another Charles’ plans never got fully off the ground and the depot was sold to the Dodge City Ford & Bucklin in 1990. It was a tourist railroad that operated the former Rock Island branch line between its namesake cities. The depot was to have been the DCF&B’s Bucklin station and a few renovations were made to the structure but ultimately the venture never panned out.

In 2000, the DCF&B Railroad disbanded and had a sale of its artifacts, including the Holcomb Depot at Bucklin. The buyer was a line to a freight operator who had no interest in continuing the tourist trains. After that, the depot was acquired by the Guthrie Arts & Humanities Council, which has plans to move it to Guthrie, Oklahoma and restore it for use in connection with their planned excursion train. But this never came to fruition and the depot continues to sit in a field out in Bucklin rotting away.

Gallery Below of Holcomb Depot