#frisco 1630

Looking at the Old Railroads: Illinois Railway Museum, October 1, 2022: A Saturday with Sunlight.

I watched the forecast for Union, Illinois for a week to see if Saturday, October 1 would have sun, and all the way up to Friday night sun remained on the National Weather Service website -- along with patchy fog.  So I got up early and hit the road.

Sunrise over farm fields.

Of course as the sun rose, I just had to stop and try a few shots of the sky -- it was just too pretty not to.  I told myself all week before “don’t stop, just go” and yeah that didn’t happen.  Shortly after I made the pause for the preceding images, I found the “patchy fog,” and would run through patches of fog for the next forty minutes or so.

Maybe not quite the “sweet morning fog” from Hounds of Love but still, worth pointing the camera at.

Driving west into Illinois there were places where the patchy fog settled across the road and it was very much like driving through the clouds; for several miles I was only a few hundred yards behind a grain truck and could but rarely glimpse it through intervening vapor.

When I got to Union, I skipped the museum grounds and headed for the only other crossing where IRM’s main road crossed the county highway.  Two other people waited, as I did, for the tourist runs, and while Frisco 1630 was scheduled to run out that weekend, there’s never any guarantee.  With passing time, I did wonder if having all the sunlight I wanted would be for nothing.

There were a pair of Chicago Transit Authority rapid transit cars:

numbered 1754 (built 1906) and 1268 (built 1907) which were running and passed by twice before the whistle and smoke indicated that 1630 was heading off.

The whole point of making this trip was to get the sunlight shining on the front end of 1630.  On several of my previous jaunts to Union I got out to that crossing later in the day, and while I’m fond of afternoon light, afternoon sun leaves the front of the trains in shadow, and I wanted something different.  I was happy to hear the distant whistle as the Frisco steamer signaled its departure and then saw the smoke wafting across the Illinois landscape.  Seeing the headlight down the tracks was reason for a sigh of relief.

Ironically, as seen below when 1630 backed toward the station, the smoke cast the front end in shadow!

I also wanted to see how the light played at the crossing at the museum grounds, so I headed that-a-way.

and chided myself for neglecting to bring the tripod -- again.  I was going to shoot some video of the passing, but my hands weren’t quite as steady as I liked, so I stuck with the still shots.

Then I headed back south.  

R. Jake Wood, 2022.

Illinois Railway Museum

Looking at the Old Railroads: Illinois Railway Museum’s Frisco 1630.

Including three shots from October 1, and three from the Labor Day “Night Train” weekend.

R. Jake Wood, 2022

Looking at the Old Railroads: Illinois Railway Museum, Labor Day 2022 – “Night Train” weekend, with extended hours for viewing after 6 PM.

Here: St Louis & San Francisco No 1630, the fan favorite.

Well, “fan favorite” beside Zephyr, but I didn’t see the Burlington diesel electric on this trip.

Waaaay down the line (it’s there, trust me).

Despite the lack of bright bright sunshiny day, I still endeavored to capture Frisco 1630 as best I could -- despite wondering “How else can I shoot this engine?  I’ve shot it so often before!”  

It wasn’t until I had driven over the line into Illinois that I realized I’d forgot my tripod, which meant that shooting in full dark would be, um, mostly a fool’s errand.  I then figured I may as well try to get some different angles, maybe shots more dramatic, than my usual want.

Like the very close-ups of the headlight (at top) I found some of the late evening came out pretty O.K., as this is:

where the lack of sun was less of a “thing.”

Framing-out as much of the too-modern stuff as I can.

I did try some shots on “full auto,” just to see what that would do, and those were, uh, interesting.  This one I liked, though:

with all the smoke blowing through the head light light.

1630 is running again in a few weeks, so -- maybe I’ll try again provided the weather forecast looks promising.  But then, the forecast for Labor Day looked promising, too, until the weekend arrived!  Provided, that is, I remember the tripod, I’d also try some more moving pictures.

But as it stands, these turned out much better than I thought at the time, so I’m not complaining at all.

R. Jake Wood, 2022.

Illinois Railway Museum

Looking at the Old Railroads: Illinois Railway Museum, Labor Day 2021.

Four years might be over-long, but I at last made another return trip to the Illinois Railway Museum for one of their event weekends: in this case, IRM’s “Night Trains,”  with the museum and grounds staying open late – until 9:30 instead of the usual 6:00 PM – to allow visitors to experience things, literally, in a different light.  

If IRM is famous for anything, it’s probably for the St. Louis and San Francisco (Frisco) No. 1630, the 1918 steam locomotive (as seen above) along with it’s usual consist of Lackawanna mail car and day coaches; and the Nebraska Zephyr, once operated by the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (Burlington Route), the diesel powered passenger train (below, next to the Chicago Aurora & Elgin interurban  309/319 pair).

Though the Zephyr rolled out late in the day, it’s likely it’s presence, alongside No. 1630, enlivened the last few hours of the Night Train event on Sunday.  Any time either train waited at the platform, rail fans’ attentions were fairly riveted.

A short span of my time at the museum was actually spent away from the museum grounds.  A couple miles south of the museum IRM’s main line meets its one county road crossing; a small turn-out is available (intentionally or not) where visitors can park and wait for the tourist runs to pass by.  It proved fruitful this time as the Zephyr and 1630 ran consecutively, allowing scenes like this:

The diesel eclipses the steamer.

As with the traction power, I discovered the hard way that my night-time shooting lacks finesse -- but since I rarely shoot in very low light, I suppose that shouldn’t be a surprise; much less very low light when the subject is in motion.  The best was this:

which has a certain something to it, but the locomotive is blurred more than I’d like.  Just have to keep up the effort I suppose; sooner or later I’ll manage something.  The static shots were better, though the clusters of rail fans bobbing around the front end of the locomotives made a clear shot difficult.  The ambient light wasn’t anything special either, just the normal lighting in the park; some of the rail fans, toward the end of the night, introduced their own light as I played around with exposures.  Some of their effort is seen in the waving lights of my shot:

I mean, if I had my way, I’d keep everyone off at a little distance and introduce some low-intensity floodlight, so that the trains could be photographed under nighttime-conditions, but not in darkness.  I don’t want to use my flash, I want the locomotives at night!  But, hey that’s me; you do you, right?

Nebraska Zephyr on the main siding.

1630 at the depot.

Despite the minor frustration with the photographs, it was still neat-o to see the trains as day transformed to night, with the sunlight glinting off the rolling stock at lower and lower angles.

And on the long list of “one of these days” is making a trip specifically to shoot the trains out on the main run in the morning when the sun is illuminating them from the front end, instead of off the side and behind!  Yeah, one of these days.

Illinois Railway Museum

Photos: R. Jake Wood, 2021.

The IRM is practically a chronic and compulsive character designer's dream. I could spend the rest of my life making little guys out of their roster and probably not ever get bored, so you can bet DJ (@greatwesternway) and I have spent the past 13 months doing exactly that lol.

1630 was absolutely one of the first ones we worked on after Pilot, given that she's so iconic and important to the IRM. Engines with stories are far and away the easiest to write for, and 1630 has a great one. Plus, she's a face as you say! I like to characterize her as a bold and confident problem solver, especially having read some of the old Rail & Wires from the time period when she was undergoing restoration. Her first trial run went so well they had her pulling trains even though she was supposed to just be fired for testing, and that to me informs so much of her personality. She was ready to work from the jump! She's obviously besties with Shay 5, being that they've worked together for so many years, and I like to think they're sort of the de facto ambassadors for the steam department with the rest of the museum.

The Electroliner, I'm a little embarrassed to say, I only got around to learning about recently even though I was struck immediately by the design. I like to picture her as a more blue-collar version of the Zephyrs, streamlined and modern but still very much of the people. I haven't explored her history that much since we haven't gotten there in the letters yet, but I'm excited to learn more! I think she and Pilot get along really well, but that's sort of a given since Pilot gets along with everybody.

Some other characters at the IRM that get some play in the discussion are The Goddesses, who all have unique personalities and have been cropping up more frequently in the letters. We've also casually written some thoughts down about the other Pullman streamlined cars (Birmingham and Loch Sloy) as well as quite a few of the diesel shunters, since they're literally always out doing stuff at the IRM, and it's easy to fall in love with the engines that are constantly out there working. Our favorite so far is the Commonwealth Edison 15 shunter because he's grey and the last time I saw it out, it was switching the aforementioned Pullman cars around and @joezworld joked that he was going, "Look! I'm a streamliner!" and that has since become basically canon.

I don't have much for the Q steam engines although they're definitely on the list. I'm very interested in the BNs 1, 2, and 3 because I think their story is going to be interesting but I also haven't put much time in on their history yet. Since the museum's roster is so extensive (especially compared to the MSI), we've just been letting the stories inspire us as we learn about them organically. DJ's been adding new entries to the timeline from the IRM's photohistory book, and that alone has sewn some ideas we're definitely going to revisit later, if not in the letters than possibly in some other stories or just for our own amusement.

Looking at the Old Railroads: Illinois Railway Museum, Labor Day 2022 – “Night Train” weekend, with extended hours for viewing after 6 PM.

Shooting on “full auto” garners something anyway.  The highlights and long shadows of tourists on the platform are nice as Frisco 1630 drives toward the station.

One of these days I’ll get back to the covered bridges; I still have a few more to go, but Labor Day just had to be a trip to the train museum!