#gp38

Oppositional Views

Here’s the exterior and interior of Gulf, Mobile & Ohio EMD GP38, built for the road in August of 1969. The controls seen here are extremely basic when compared with current day locomotives.

The locomotive is part of the power consist on a southbound train, which is sitting on the passing track at Bloomington, Indiana. This is on Illinois Central’s line to Indianapolis, known as the Hi-Dry. The IC and GM&O had merged to form the Illinois Central Gulf by this time.

Back in the day, a rail enthusiast could climb around on a parked train for their photographs, inside and out.

Another Early Effort

Here’s another sequence from my early days of photographing trains: this is a southbound manifest on the Illinois Central through my hometown of Bloomington, Indiana.

The IC had merged with the Gulf Mobile & Ohio just three years earlier (and did not paint over locomotives quickly in any case) and so we have two of those units here—along with a black IC geep. The locos in order then, all EMD: GP30, GP38, GP9.

The first two shots were made at the yard office while the latter two from the Rogers Street timber bridge just to the west (railroad south). The final pictures shows an Illinois Central track-side structure there for motor cars.