The website https://www.historicaerials.com/ has various aerial photos of that location dated from 1952 to 2016.
Well, 16 years ago, she was assigned to what was the American Italian Pasta plant off American Italian Way in Columbia. (Not too far off the Shop Rd exit). It's now called Tree House Foods. They also had an SW1 at that time and I believe it is still there. Not a lot of info on this unit out there. What I could find is she was built for UP and at some point was bought and rebuilt by Precision National and leased to the C&NW for a time. Eventually she became part of the Relco fleet. After her stint in Columbia SC, I didn't find anything on where she went or is now.
RLCX 1614 was built in 1954 as UP 251. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/7b/70/4e/7b704e063de1e6679f7abeda0d84622b.jpg It was sold to Precision National in April 1977, and then to GE Railcar. It was then leased to CNW and rebuilt at Oelwein IA in 1977 and became their 4390. https://donsdepot.donrossgroup.net/dr0604/cnw4390.jpg It was retired in 1989, returned to GE Railcar and resold to Railway Equipment Leasing Co., where it became their 1614.
Upon arriving at North Western Station in Chicago, I'd often see a few Fs and Es spotted just outside the terminal and always thought it was the coolest sight. I wonder if this area was once used to hold head end cars? Has that look about it with the platform canopies and all. [March 1975]
I think you're right that the engine tracks were once for freight. I just found this photo online: https://pixels.com/featured/1-train...ago-and-north-western-historical-society.html that shows some baggage and boxcars on those tracks. Today, they are still used for engine storage and servicing. On google earth, it looks like they kept the covered platforms too. I've never been to Ogilvie station, so I can't tell you exactly what goes on there.
Fresh and clean, eastbound Schneider containers on a Q train over Gassman Coulee Trestle west of Minot, ND:
I've not seen anything else like them either, combining positioned colored lights with a semaphore graphic. That's Lake Street Tower to the right and I think Clinton Street Tower in dark brick the distant center. Interesting too is the small-windowed bi-level to the left, an indicator of the first series of bi-level cars purchased by the road. [Kodachrome, March 1975]
Three engine power move... actually NS 8983 is the trailing unit... Conrail 8463 was leading running long hood front...
Dwarf semaphores? I suspect the entire disc rotates, illuminating one of the colored lenses depending on position (the lamp being inside the box in back), and moving the semaphore graphic along at the same time. It would be interesting to see the doohickey from other angles.
I found this video online that shows the internal mechanism. I'm not sure you'll get more closeup than that: It looks like the signals at Ogilvie had black housings, because I didn't notice the two auxiliary lights on top (star-shaped no less!) until watching that video.
UP 1111 North leading CP 375 into Cotter, IA. November 21, 2021 Video: Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
That's close up enough! Great! Thank you sir! The mechanism with the contacts reminds me of an on-load tap changer (OLTC). OLTCs are added to large electrical transformers (power utilities) to switch taps on the transformer to change the primary-to-secondary ratio slightly when the upstream line voltage varies with load. That way, there are no large fluctuations downstream or at the customer end, which could potentially damage other electrical apparatus or even the customer's equipment. Either way, that makes for a lot of unhappy people. At my job, I built about 80 test sets for these things. Again, thanks.
One of my favorite odd freight cars. There is a place in Chattanooga TN that receives these cars but they are usually in a spot that is not accessible for pictures. In all my years railfanning Chattanooga, I was never able to get a shot of one in the open. Then, I happened across this one near Victorville CA in July 2013