At 12:14 AM 11/21/02, you wrote:
I was set back to fireman on train #347 #346 #348 for five months in the
time when we had the X-CNW equipment. I worked old mainline between
Galesburg, Chicago and return. I also made many trips as engineer or fireman
between Galesburg and West Quincy. We had no cab car just three or four
gallery cars depending on passenger traffic. Originally everything was still
painted CNW, then one weekend they received the Amtrak paint. The regular
power was a X-CNW FT (a lot of cloth covered wiring in the electrical
cabinet) rebuilt by EMD into a FP-9M. Sorry, I don't remember the number. She
ran pretty well except when the unit started to bounce up and down, The unit
still had the FT power contactors and gravity would force her to drop her
load and quit working. You could also model the train about 10% of the time
with a X-Q SD-24 on the point, when the FP-9M would quit loading right in the
Zephyr Pit at 14th Street. We would use the FP-9M for hotel power and the
SD-24 to run the train at 79 mph. The entire consist was turned on the wye at
West Quincy, at Chicago, we would tail hose from the CUS to the coach yard
and turn the engine at the table. The coaches were easy, service people flip
the seats to face the other direction and resupplied the cafe section.
An interesting note in this time period was on holidays or extra heavy
traffic periods second sections were the norm. We ran them as Advance #347,
usually made up of Santa Fe high level equipment about 6 to 8 cars and two
SDP-40fs or a couple of times Santa Fe passenger F's ABB. Hope the
information is helpful.
Ron Copher
Darren and Ron - what year(s) are we talking here?
Paul Kossart - Peru, Illinois, USA
Modeling the CB&Q & fictional Illiniwek River Valley area in the 1960's.
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"Serving Agriculture and Industry in the Illiniwek River Valley since 1904."
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