#doubletrack

From the Quad Cities

This is where Marley Road flies over the Rock Island, just a bit east of New Lenox, Illinois. The photograph was made in the waning days of Rock Island intercity passenger train service. The train pictured is the Quad Cities Rocket.

Grayland

This is an outbound train headed for Milwaukee just eight miles out from Chicago Union Station, at Grayland.

We're on the Milwaukee Road and the equipment is the French RTG, or so-called Turboliner, operated by Amtrak.

The train will soon cross over a north/south line of the C&NW, with Mayfair just beyond that.

Marley Road

This is where Marley Road flies over the Rock Island, just a bit east of New Lenox, Illinois. Time is running out for this road, a few years at the most; it is a real favorite for rail enthusiasts. The train is a westbound with a couple of General Electric U-boats in charge.

Deerfield

Here’s a northbound train tearing through Deerfield, Illinois, on the Milwaukee Road’s double track main line between Chicago and its namesake city. The location is where Waukegan Road and Telegraph road are on either side of the railroad, at North Avenue.

I’m really glad I shot three images here—head end coming, along with the locomotives and caboose going away. Otherwise I would not have caught something interesting here: that string of reefers three cars in front of the caboose. Look for the roof hatches open for drying. Until I saw this scan, I had no idea that ice-filled reefers were still in service when I was taking pictures back in the mid- to late-1970s.

C&NW Mainline in Iowa

It seems to me the Union Pacific was able to play the Iowa roads (Chicago & North Western, Great Western, Rock Island) against each other to their advantage. Here we see three trains of the Union Pacific racing across the double-track mainline of the C&NW near Denison. (The trains here in order: EB east of Vail, EB at Denison, EB west of Carroll, and WB east of Vail.)

The final image seems to be all C&NW—perhaps this is their hot train that ran between Chicago and Fremont. Now that I think of it, perhaps all of these would interchange with the UP at Fremont, rather than at Omaha. All lead locomotives are EMD SD40-2s.

I posted two of these before—albeit the black and white versions. One will note that the C&NW was known for running their trains on the “wrong main”. But for this railroad, left-hand running was “right”. That bell placement on the nose is distinctive as well.