Needles, California, March, 1943: The Santa Fe freight train has arrived at the yard and Jack Delano decided to stretch his legs during the crew change and servicing. Down by the roundhouse he captured this image of a worker as he was topping off the sand supply on a locomotive. Note the twin sand domes on this locomotive. The terrain is hilly in this area of the country, and the engineer will often need to apply sand to the rails for traction.

The #3843 is a Santa Fe 2-10-2 type built by Baldwin. It was an oil-fired locomotive, and had 63″ drivers, a 220 psi boiler pressure, and exerted 85,485 pounds of tractive effort. Some years ago an impressive HO scale brass model of this locomotive was offered.