Charlie, since it hasn’t been all that long ago,do you happen to remember whether the locos were in the yard on the North side or on the south wye ?! Or actually “downstairs “ in the small IHB yard ? I ask because in researching operations at Congress Park a hard,firm agreement between the IHB,Q and operating unions on both carriers about who picked up and set out where was long established.
The IHB delivered to the Q in the North side yard and pulled from the south wye. The Q delivered to IHB on the south wye. On the extremely rare times something else was done timeslips and letters flew in heavy volume.
Somewhere in my visuals for the future Congress Park operations article in the BRHS Bulletin I do have a couple photos of dead locos at the west end of the Q North yard track one.
Leo Phillipp
All-
On the subject of engines being sent to scrap….ok
In my “yout” I spent a lot of time on my bike hanging around Congress Park station.
One day I saw a line of CB&Q engines (mostly 2-8-2s as I recall) with the cab roof overhangs chopped off so they could be drawbared back to back in the interchange yard on the IHB. They were no doubt on the way to the scrapyards on the south side of Chicago to be melted down.
I crawled all over them and, unfortunately, the only camera I had was one of those 8mm “spy cameras” from a comic book which I never got developed.
I don’t recall the date but while I was clambering over the hulks a Hudson on a fantrip flashed by on the bridge westbound so it might be possible to establish when it was.
Did anyone get photos of these engines?
Charlie Vlk
I also remember seeing a funeral train of C&NW Atlantics and Pacifics heading south on the IHB a couple of years later when the dieselization of C&NW commuter service was completed.