List, Burlington Northern passenger, although tattered was still Q and Budd
equiptment. As a fireman a on the X list and barely able to hold Galesburg,
the remaining passenger service was a lifesaver. Later, other than being
knocked off a passenger job for a few months here or there when an older man
was set back to firing, I had a long run with passenger service.
Everything changed when Amtrak took over. We scammbled to hide the better Q
"E's" out in Western Ave. yard but Amtrak found 'em and absorbed them. We
started to get the UP junk and some really bizarre motor lashups.
Ron is quite right about the antique ex-C&NW equipment. On the very first
day of the Illinois Zephyr, we used the #9936 for a publicity photo in the
CUS as it was positioned earlier in the day at the Zephyr pit with two other
ex Q E's.....the 91 and the 93. All three motors were still Q except for
their numbers with a "BN" at the rear side panels, but from the front they
were still Q.
The C&NW stuff that we got was first class junk. Our shop people used to
say that they thought the mechanical staff on other railroads were idiots
but then we began to think they were geniuses. They could fix a locomotive
just good enough to get to Chicago before it fell apart. Many a night the
power we brought into Chicago ended up, problems and all, being turned for
the run west. As one old rail put it, "We're not riding junk, we're riding
scrap."
Up to this time we still had laborers at the Zephyr pit mopping down the
engineroom floors. Quite a difference between our way of doing things and
other railroads, especially when our E units were alongside some Penn
Central power and we were able to compare. When we started getting the C&NW
stuff we had air leakage of 20 lbs. or more a minute which meant the
engineer would not even have to put the brakehandle in "service" position.
All he would have to do is "lap" the brake valve which meant that all the
ports were closed thus the air would leak down at an unaccepatable rate and
set the train brakes. Factor in making a late night air test in a cold
Chicago winter with a deserted Zephyr pit and the charm of older equipment
wore off rather fast. The "F" unit Ron refered to was the C&NW 4075-C and
the 4072. At times we actually used both back to back with the C&NW
highlevels. These locomotives ( and I use the term lightly ) had extremely
bad exhaust coming up into the cab. I suspect the reason for using two of
these locomotives together was that one had an operating Cummens for
lighting and heat on the train and the other locomotive was used for
traction power. One of these were worse than the other but I don't remember
which one. The auxillary power plants at the back of thses motors were
prone to failure as we went dead, in more than one way, at various stations
up and down the mainline. This was a far cry from just a couple years
earlier. A fireman got a lot of time trying to make things hold together
back in the engineroom. This was the equipment before all the relays and
contacts were sealed up behind the cabinate doors. We even used a Geep
either a 7 or 9 on #348 one day. Later Amtrak 288 non Q and Amtrak 349 a Q
locomotive I think, was used quite a bit. Years later I was ordered out of
the freight pool at Cicero to take a small freight engine to 14th Street to
bring 20 some dead stiff suburban "E" units west. We stalled at Union Ave.
Ron, remember the story of Dale Truelove and Bob Stinson with one of these
westbound C&NW trains when the locomotive jumped the track at Earlville and
went on the ground? I think one of the C&NW locomotives bit the dust there,
no pun intended. Then we got the new Amtrak 500's and stuff really started
getting interesting. Bill
----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul/Celine Kossart" <kozys@t...>
To: <BRHSlist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 27, 2002 11:59 AM
Subject: Re: [BRHSlist] CNW highlevels
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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