Santa Claus brought me Bill and Michael Raia's book A Celebration of Chicagoland Railroads, 1935-1971 and it's very well done. There's a neat photo from June 1970 at Mayfair of an 11 Car C&NW scoot lead by an A-B team of Fs. I remember seeing this arrangement a few times when I was young, years before I owned a camera and thought it was the coolest thing I'd ever seen. The book explains that the E Units from the KCS had yet to be purchased, so the C&NW teamed up A-B combinations to handle heavier commuter trains on the Northwest Line. The B unit in the photo was ex-CGW and was equipped with head-end power. The four KCS Es arrived within the year and put an end to the practice.
From 09/10/1995 at Red Hill, SC is former C&NW 520 (nee 5022B) in faded Regional Transportation Authority (RTA) paint. The RTA was a forbearer of Chicago's Metra. The 520 had been purchased by South Carolina's Waccamaw Coast Line Railroad, which went bust and was then acquired by the Carolina Southern which in turn was bought by R.J. Corman. Somewhere along the way, the 520 met her fate with a scrapper's torch.
I don't seem to have a picture of the 520, but I do have one of the 521. [about 1975, Barrington, IL]
From that paint scheme - Discerning the engine number of an approaching train had no 'priority' to either trains or ground personnel, with no number being presented on the front of the locomotive.
It's kind of weird that the C&NW's Fs in commuter service had front number boards, while the Es were mixed. I read that former UP Es were more apt to keep their number boards, but even some of those were blanked out. I looked through my pictures and found these as examples. Both are from about 1975 or 1976, top picture at North Western Station in Chicago and the other at the Barrington, IL coach yard.
You're spot on. I snagged a picture of it through the window of an Amtrak train we rode from Milwaukee. [07/02/2013]
I received this book as a Christmas gift and greatly enjoyed reading it. It features extensive geographic coverage, excellent photography and informative captions throughout. I learned a bunch of things I never knew. Plus, at about $40, it doesn't cost a king's ransom. If you're a fan of Chicago regional railroad history, you might consider adding it to your library.
Noticed the single SD70MACH trains were a maximum of 5 cars - trains over 5 cars were run to two engines and SD70 and another engine. Is this that two units are needed to maintain schedules or is the reliability of the SD70 still being established and using two engines is a 'belt & suspenders' form of protection?
I'm sure it is a "just in case" situation because I can't imagine one of the SD70s not being able to handle anything Metra throws at them. Heck, I have seen one of the 1500 HP GP15ACs haul 14 of the commuter cars. Doug
I came across these two neat photos of the C&NW's suburban station at Palatine, IL on the "Northwest Line" a little less than 30 miles out of Chicago. @Doug Gosha and I are fans of Post War architecture and I'm sure others are too. These were taken about 1950, so very cool. (I hope these pictures stay put here. They sometimes vanish shortly after being posted.) Palatine's wood station can be seen in the distance in the top photo. The Post War station as seen here was razed and replaced with another in the late '60s or early '70s. That station too was razed and replaced with a fourth, much larger station.
This was Palatine's third station, the one built in the late '60s or early '70s. I shot this 08/14/1978.
C&NW's locomotive number 5000A was a one-off Baldwin DR-6-2-1000, with only one 606SC engine in the carbody, one truck powered and a baggage compartment in the rear. It was ordered in October 1946 and delivered in November 1948 where it went to work in IA, then IL and WI, before being retired ten years later in 1958. [Photo from C&NW Historical Society Archives]
They had the crews out this morning clearing snow and lighting burners to warm up the switchwork: Doug
Happened upon a neat postcard image of the C&NW's Madison, WI station. Opened in 1910, it saw its last passenger train in 1965. Happily, it still stands as an office of Madison Gas and Electric.
Yeah, that's neat and also that it's still there. Another architecture style I like is from the early nineteen hundreds like that with the horizontal lines as also on the CNW power house and other structures at Ogilvie. Doug
