#emde8a

Quad Cities Rocket

Another one of my earliest railroad images...

This is an eastbound Rock Island Quad Cities Rocket with E8 655 on the point. It was built for the railroad in March of 1952.

The location, of course, is the well known crossing with the ATSF and GM&O at Joliet, Illinois.

Which Rocket?

I put a question out to a knowledgeable group on Facebook—if it was approximately 6:00 PM when this image was made (based on the the sun nearly being down in early October), could we make a firm call on which Rocket this be?

Update: the FB group was quite firm with this train being the Peoria Rocket rather than the Quad Cities. One supplied an image showing the timetables for the two trains, which I’ll add above. The Rock Island was one of about four railroads that did NOT have their passenger trains folded into Amtrak in 1971.

Birmingham Action

Here are a couple of trains of the Southern Railway in Birmingham, Alabama. The first three images were taken east of downtown, the fourth while the Southern Crescent is making its station stop, and the last has the same train continuing on its way to New Orleans.

The freight is led by one of the most idiosyncratic units—an EMD GP30 with a high short hood. The passenger train is powered by a quartet of E8s; the legacy equipment following (at this time) is still heated by steam generators on these wonderful locomotives.

Amtrak Floridians

Here are two Amtrak Floridians on the Louisville & Nashville, former Monon. The trains are seen crossing over the east fork of the White River, in the span of an hour or less, just south of Bedford, Indiana.

This is during the time where the SDP40Fs were sidelined with a mysterious derailment issue, and before many F40PHs were delivered (hence the luck of seeing the wonderful E-units). Number 402 is an E9A built in 1955, former B&O; number 439 is an E8A built in 1952 for the RF&P. The dome in the first image is Silver Ranch, a California Zephyr car built for the CB&Q.

Harrodsburg Siding

Here we see a possible meet underway—at Harrodsburg Siding on the Louisville & Nashville, former Monon. While I seem only to have one of the trains in my slides here, I’m nearly certain that this northbound Amtrak Floridian is meeting the southbound train of the same ilk—the headlight is turned off and the crew would not venture onto that light rail for no good reason.

This spot is between Bloomington and Bedford on the fairly early line—built in the mid-19th century. The freshly painted EMD E8A was built in 1952 for the Richmond, Fredericksburg and Potomac Railroad as number 1007. And the final car is interesting as well—an old Southern Pacific baggage car.