I just learned that Vernon Smith passed away Fb. 12th. Vernon was a steam locomotive designer and as I have been told he was probably the last person alive who designed a steam locomotive from the ground up and then supervised the construction and testing. Notible of his achievemnts was the design of the SP 4-8-4 running gear and then the design and testing of the Santa Fe 3752 Franklin rotary poppit valve engine. Mr. Smith was also responsible for the design and testing of the Santa Fe 3765, 3776 and 2900 class engines and then the conversion of the 3751 class. below copied is Vernon Smith's obit:

Vernon L. Smith worked on the railroad for much of his life.

The Minnesota native's fascination with trains began as a boy and was fueled by his extensive reading on the subject. A short stint working for a mining company in the 1920s led to a job as a locomotive engineer while he was still in his teens.

"His life evolved around the railroad," said his son Kenneth. "He worked long hours, went wherever they needed him and as a result participated in and witnessed some of the most exciting advances in the industry."

Mr. Smith, 93, of Downers Grove, the retired chief of motive power with Belt Railway Co. of Chicago and one of the last steam locomotive designers, died Saturday, Feb. 12, in La Grange Memorial Hospital of complications related to an infection after surgery.

Born in Virginia, Minn., Mr. Smith was a gifted student who skipped two grades before leaving school to work. He landed a job at M.A. Hanna, an iron-ore mining company, where he quickly advanced into engine service and was promoted to locomotive engineer at age 19.

During the Depression, Mr. Smith gained a technical education from the University of Minnesota and signed up for an engineering apprenticeship with Differential Steel Car Co. of Findlay, Ohio, a builder of rail equipment for mines and mills. There he was involved in designing burden-bearing cars and dump cars.

Early in 1937, Mr. Smith began working at Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio. One of his first assignments was to design the machinery for Southern Pacific Railroad locomotives.

"Lima was the premier locomotive designer back then," his son said.

Later that year, Mr. Smith married his wife of 67 years, Olive. After the ceremony, the couple rode the New York Central Railroad to Chicago, stayed at the Palmer House and left the following morning for a winter honeymoon in Minneapolis.

In 1938, Mr. Smith took a job with Franklin Railway Supply Co. in Baltimore. There he worked on the design and manufacture of modern steam locomotives.

With the advent of diesel-electric locomotives in the early 1940s, Mr. Smith accepted a position as assistant engineer of tests for Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, later becoming the acting general supervisor of diesel engines. Family members said one of his first assignments was a feasibility study for the electrification of portions of the Santa Fe Railway.

In 1954, Mr. Smith became superintendent of motive power for the Belt Railway, where he spent the next 22 years standardizing and modernizing a locomotive fleet and related mechanical systems.

After his retirement in 1976, Mr. Smith continued to write and lend his expertise on locomotive operations.

With the rise of locomotive preservation in the 1960s, Mr. Smith often was called upon for his technical knowledge, family members said.

"Many a restored locomotive owed its extended working life to him," his son said.

Other survivors include another son, Charles; two brothers, Kenneth and Lynn; and a sister, Renee.

Services have been held.

Vern Smith will be greatly missed. He usually had the last work on any topic related to railroad, especially if it was about modern steam power. That’s not because he was the type of guy that always had to have the last word. Far from it. Vern was a rather soft-spoken gentleman and I often wondered how he would get his point across in a noisy boiler shop. Rather, Vern combined an encyclopedic knowledge with a rare gift for providing straightforward answers to complex questions. One rarely had need for further argument.

The last time we talked, he related his attendance at the first, and perhaps only, hundred mile-per-hour stationary speed run on the Altoona locomotive test bed. His vivid recollection of the roaring locomotive was equally only by his description the pounding drivers. He actually ducked slightly as he related that the vibrations were so great as to loosen bolts in the running boards. After they dropped and hit the spinning rods, they ricocheted around the building like bullets and shot out several windows. There was a gleam in his eye when he said, “we probably could have gone faster, but we decided to call it a day.â€