Oops! Last evening, an MRL switch crew had a cut of cars get loose. They ended up piling into a BNSF freight train in Billings, Montana. Nobody was injured, as there was warning, and that train crew had evacuated. The lead BNSF C44-9W sustained significant damage. But the leading runaway freight car was a BNSF Colorado & Southern heritage hopper. And it is a total loss.
The post contains reference to when, where, who, what and why. I had thought that would be enough information. I do not have permission to share the photo I was provided. I could not read the BNSF unit number, 4xxx. The hopper was mangled right into that number area, so could not give that. Just received an answer the C44-9W is/was 4855, the hopper 486868.
I was going to post a link to the photo, but I can't even find a picture. I did find a picture of some of the heritage hoppers, but none of them were the Colorado and Southern.
As it happened in Billings, I checked the Gazette web site and they had exactly two lines. No pictures. Seems a bit odd. The photo I have came from a source within MRL.
Here's a pic of the dearly departed... http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=464515&nseq=0 And, just realized they finally did a FW&D heritage hopper! Sometime in the late spring/early summer of last year apparently. http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=3708705 Hopefully Intermountain will pick this one up, too.
Thanks, Doug A. I didn't know what the C&S logo looked like. UP has these type cars all around. I think someone else has already mentioned "trademark car." I don't think they are so very rare as these BNSF cars with just three each.
Am sure I have grabbed a photo of BNSF 4855, somewhere in my area. Been looking through my disks, but can't find it. Darn.
I don't think there are too many people that know what the C&S logo looked like or that they even had one. Most assume--as part of the CB&Q--that they just always used the Burlington Route logo. And even less people know of the FW&D "The Denver Road" logo or that it had that nickname. I use "Denver Road Doug" as my handle on some other forums and most people assume I model Colorado, not Texas. Here is a mashed BNSF / "Denver Road" logo I made just for fun. Thought I might get some decals made someday to put on the nose of an SD70MAC or something like that.
Most people don't know the railroad was once known as the Fort Worth & Denver City. I have always wonderd if that referred to Denver City, Texas, or was Denver, Colorado also once known as Denver City?
No, it did not have anything to do with Denver City, which wasn't founded until 1935. According to Wikipedia about Denver, Colorado:
Thanks! I model the FW&D lines as they existed during BNSF times...1998-2003 or so. So I thought it would be cool to come up with a logo that reflected the lines' heritage but with the (at the time) current BNSF image. There's very little imagination involved...it's a pretty straight up mash of the two logos. I use it as an avatar on other forums that permit it. I actually want to redo it at some point to clean it up a little bit, but maybe after my layout gets a little further along.
See if you can figure out how the puzzle pieces fit together... https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd....455_656012714435379_2650488377886706558_n.jpg https://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hph...079_656013177768666_4057253913308149515_n.jpg
