Built in 1909 by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway in the Mission Revival style, Lamy station was the southern terminus for the Santa Fe Southern Railway until 2014. Currently used by Amtrak’s Southwest Chief line, the station is 18 miles south of Santa Fe and the only way to get there by train and then a connecting bus.

Scientists arriving for work at Los Alamos by train were met at the Lamy station and escorted to 109 E Palace Avenue in Santa Fe, the gateway to the Manhattan Project and work on the hill.

The building is maintained as it looked so many years ago. Walking into the waiting area is taking a trip back in time, imagining rail passengers disembarking for Santa Fe.

In March, 1944, 200 grams of uranium 235 were shipped from Y-12 in Oak Ridge, TN, to Los Alamos. Army Lieutenants dressed as salesmen travelled by commercial train to Chicago, then to New Mexico — and through Lamy station — with the uranium concealed in two coffee-cup-sized gold-lined nickel containers inside a special briefcase.

B&T Metals, at the corner of Front and Long streets (now Town and Lucas streets) in Columbus, Ohio, manufactured aluminum pieces used to hold linoleum and carpeting to the floor. When Lyman Kilgore bought the company in 1932, it became one of the first African-American owned factories in the United States, employing more than 500 workers on three shifts at its peak.

For eight months during 1943, B&T Metals was contracted by DuPont to extrude rods of uranium metal pellets for the B Reactor in Hanford, Washington, for the Manhattan Project. In the northwest corner of the main building on the second floor, workers stretched uranium into long rods, cutting them into 24-inch lengths. The slugs were ground on lathes until they were 7-8 inches in diameter.

There were no additional safety precautions, nor gloves or masks. Workers were required to have weekly government-organized physicals. Once each month, the workers had an extensive medical screening. Those working on the project were watched by armed guards, and security was tighter when the rods were removed for transport.

In the 1990s, remediation and decontamination of the area cleaned up most of the area. In 2004, a part of the second floor of the main building where uranium was handled collapsed, so the building was demolished. A developer has been working to turn the old factory and surrounding area in Franklinton into a “funky” arts district.

Out on a far section of Wendover Airfield, you’ll find what remains of the loading pits for the Silverplate B-29 Superfortress bombers. The size of the atomic bombs were such that they couldn’t be loaded in a traditional manner into the bombers because of their height. As such, the training bombs at Wendover (called pumpkin bombs which were the same dimensions and weight) were lowered into the pits. The bombers were then maneuvered over the pit, and the bomb was raised on a hydraulic jack into the bomber.

The full access tour at Historic Wendover Airbase (usually offered twice each year) takes visitors out to the bomb pits to see what remains. These same pits were replicated on Tinian for deployment during World War II and the culmination of the Manhattan Project.

Below is a video (no sound, courtesy the Atomic Heritage Foundation) showing the atomic bomb loading pits on Tinian along with the loading of Little Boy into Enola Gay and Fat Man into Bockscar.