Well I was hoping to add on to this last night, but... Anyway after we took the pictures for the west bound we headed to Polo. This ended up being a bad move, I was going to show Tina the overpass left over from the ICG line that came from Bloomington IL. Well a few wrong turns later and we were out of town and on my way to North Stratford. I assume North Stratford was a town at one time, but now it is just a siding for the BNSF. An old dairy farm is nearby slowly giving way to time and gravity. This location is good in that you can park near the grade crossing which is next to a signal. With my binoculars I can see the other signal in the west. Tina and I made it up to the grade crossing just as a red and silver C44 went by, shoot We waited for about thirty minutes because the dispatcher said there was another eastbound. I thought this was the container train we had heard about earlier and Tina had seen while I was looking the right roads for the overpass. I set up for the shot, but the sun was in a bad place. Long story short this shot did not come out. It was a pair of H2 GE AC4400's with autoracks. We next drove to Oregon, grabed a bite to eat at our favorite 1950's drive in Jay's and took our food down to the tracks. Oregon is a nice little town where the CB&Q had a nice station. BNSF still used the station up until a few years ago, now the historical society is restoring it East of the station is a bridge that spans the Rock River, within minutes of me parking the car, the scanner picked up the defect detector in Chana, east of Oregon. At first I thought it was a BN white face, but as it turned the corner I could see it was a lighter shade of green Oh looks like the BNSF need some rental equipment, it is a FURX. I never realised how cool the paint scheme was, hope the wife doesn't want one of those painted. The sun was setting and the light was getting low, Tina was tired (or over stimulated ) and we got ready to move on out, one last inspection of the station proved a wise move. This freshly painted two bay covered hopper was sitting at the yard. You can almost smell the paint. That new logo in two color does look nice on a light gray car, I still think they need to take Rocky out of retirement, he would look great on some of the rolling stock! Well this concludes my three part adventure. I'm doing it all over again on Good Friday and doing a lot more with video and my Ibook's I Movie program. I'll post that too if you guys like. And please! If any of you "old hands" worked this line especially during the early BN or late CB&Q era, hint hint Charlie, please post! I would love to hear about the line. Jim
================================= Actually Jim, I am(was)BNSF era. Railroading was my 3rd career. I have films of the CB & Q in the 50's however I have great memories of Oregon & the area as kid. When I was a youth member of the Boy Scouts, we used to hold our fall camp-o-ree at White Pines State Park. I took movie films of the C.B.& Q trains going thru there. We used to have a special charter train take us to the camp early Saturday AM and bring us back on Sunday afternoon. I had not even the slightest idea that some day I would be operating trains through that same area. In addition to working the road switchers working that area(out of Rochelle)on numerous occasions, I was the brakeman on a work train for 3days dumping rock on the new(current)Oregon siding. Cush job, had a good time, worked with a good crew made good money. Also worked the job that went to the printing plant on the (former)Mt.Morris branch a few times. That was an interesting ride! CT
