It's interesting to study how local service changed over the decades.
For example under the Q; Rockfalls/Sterling,IL were served by a 5 day a
week local from Eola for many,many years. Out Monday to Rockfalls, Tues back
to
Eola after laying over, Weds. was a roundtrip Eola-Earlville w/o service up
the branch and then another out and back trip Thurs/Fri.to Rockfalls. So in
essence Northwestern Steel and Wire cars only left town twice a week on the Q.
This job had a Q wood caboose and for awhile it was chalked with a pheasant
in flight so the Eola yard crews knew which job it went on. Check the archives
for the story behind the pheasant !
To be fair and accurate the other assigned waycars were also chalked so the
yard guys knew at a glance which job to throw which w/c onto. But the others
didn't have the same level of story underlying the chalk marks.
Now when things changed to BN green the job worked out of Mendota and made a
daily roundtrip to Rockfalls so service did improve markedly. This job had a
NE 13 assigned and Jerry Barlow kept it in great condition,probably a habit
from his days in the C&I pool with an assigned w/c.
Once the Rockfalls-Denrock wayfreight was pulled off all cars has to be
handled on the Rockfalls job from Mendota. The train size more than doubled,
the
track went downhill quickly,derailments,dogcatch crews,etc were common. track
speed went from 30-10 mph but the NE13 stayed almost til the end.
Meanwhile on the Earlville turn operating Eola-Mendota at 60 mph we had an
old NP plated over waycar !
Leo Phillipp
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