Santa Rosa to put retired Howarth Park train back up for auction

Howarth Park’s little engine that could can’t seem to find a new owner.

The weeklong public auction for the retired C.P. Huntington train engine ended at noon Wednesday without a sale.

The only bid was for $7,500 by someone with the online handle of pat2770707. But that was below the unpublished minimum price set by the City of Santa Rosa.

So the unsold engine sits under a tarp in the corner of the city’s Stony Point Road corporation yard, awaiting its fate.

“We really don’t have covered storage for it, so it’d be nice to have it find a home before the weather turns nasty,” said Karl Lienau, the city’s fleet maintenance supervisor.

Built in 1969 by Chance Manufacturing Co. of Wichita, Kansas, the little red-white-and-blue engine chugged along the city’s beloved 24-inch rail line in Howarth Park for 40 years before it was retired earlier this year, replaced by a shiny new model.

The city lists the gas powered engine as being in fair condition, though city officials cited high maintenance needs in opting to retire it.

The city will now likely lower the reserve amount and repost the engine to the government surplus auction website in the near future, Lienau said.

Details of the past auction and how to follow future ones can be found online at http://bit.ly/2hyyJr5.

You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @srcitybeat.