C&NW Bi-Level No.1 was found at Barrington, IL on a snowy day in March 1979. She was the first in an order of only 16 cars from St. Louis Car in 1955. Amazingly, these early cars were seen pulled by steam. The road's fleet eventually grew to nearly 300 cars with additional orders to Pullman Standard, including a quantity specially designed for lengthy routes far from Chicago. The C&NW ran a superb commuter service -- fast, clean, affordable and on schedule. My father rode their trains daily for 16 years and I rode them plenty too. What could be better than riding a train to Chicago to visit hobby shops?
Wow! you can say that again and those are NEAT cars! I only ever got to go to one Chicago hobby shop and I can't remember its name. It was in Itasca (a west-of-downtown suburb) and across the street from the Holiday Inn I was staying at during a business trip in 2009. It was there I bought a duplicate of my late older brother's Tyco Santa Fe cigar band F9 he got in a train set in 1961 and which had been gone for years. Doug
SD60-3(rebuilt from an ex SOO) CP 6306 leading 474 across the Yellow River Bridge north of Marquette, IA. July 25, 2020 Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
CP 4612, but at work, I cannot check my usual roster links. It doesn't seem to still be rostered by CP.
Three Amtrak cars as seen in Montgomery, AL. Lounge car Betsy Ross was built by Budd in 1952 for the PRR, retired July 1995 [seen 10/1989]. Sleeper Pacific Patrol (an awesome name!) was built for the UP about 1949. It's since been renamed Pacific Cape (boooo) and serves as some sort of ATK company service car [seen 11/1989]. The Observation was a private car for Anheuser-Busch built in 1954 by the WAB in their shops. Unusual skirting. It's off the roster. [seen 10/1984]
"Foxholm Canola 199" A few miles north of Foxholm, ND, CP train 199 struggles to make track speed on the gentle Des Lacs River valley grade west of Minot on the CP Portal Sub.
With a friendly Geoffrey The Giraffe emblazoned on the side, a Toys R Us trailer makes its way through Howells Interlocking in Atlanta, GA in August 1994. What's weird is that there's no SCAC code or stenciling on the trailer. It's brand new, so maybe it was being transported from the manufacturer to Toys R Us.
Yeah, that's it! They have a lot of stuff there. I also bought the old Heljan N scale coal tower and, I believe, another building kit. Doug
On July 16th, there were no trains rolling across the double track main between Dunlap and Jefferson, IA. Just parked with crew and waiting for the "go lights." And these were the reason! The majority of the equipment and crews were down in a cut east of Denison, IA at the time, but I was able to watch these two pieces working...
"Peekaboo at Ten-Six" H-NTWPAS rolls around the curve near CP10.6 as an eastbound intermodal drifts downgrade.
On my last layout, I super elevated the largest, prominent and sweeping curve (the first thing you saw of the layout). It was neat seeing four SD-40 2's, leaning into that curve with a long string of cars in tow! I miss it. I forget to mention that it was DOUBLE TRACKS!
In imaginative strokes of adaptation, the SOU turned an FT-B into a scale test car [Spartanburg, SC - 11/1989] and the Kankakee, Beaverville & Southern turned an RS-11 into a snowplow [Donovan, IL - 10/1990].
Shortline and regional roads were often the most inventive and used whatever they had available to fill their needs. The two above photos are pure proof of this. Thanks for sharing!