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Great find, Fred. The post from the blog is very interesting. Mt Morris had an outsized role on the Q considering it's tiny size. The Kable Brothers printing plant is the reason that the Q put on the daily "Oregon Turn" circa 1949. It was necessary in order to provide the level of daily service required by Kable. As covered in our Society publications, after Way Freight 46, the Oregon-Mt Morris local, returned from switching Mt Morris and Kable, the Oregon Turn would take the loaded express cars and drop them at Aurora. These cars were then tacked onto an evening commuter heading down to Chicago Union Station for further handling. Though you often see pictures of NW-2's switching Mt Morris and pulling the Oregon Turn, through 1952, this job was done by 2-6-2 Prairies and 4-6-2 Pacific steam engines. Because there was no way to turn the engine, it would pull the cars up to Mt Morris backwards, do the switching, then return to Oregon facing forwards. On the Oregon Turn, the engine would need to use the Flag Center wye to turn the engine for the run back to Eola. Trains 45 and 52 also played an important role, dropping express cars like the troop kitchen and baggage cars at Oregon to go up to Kable. Way Freight 45 (going a whole seven miles) would take the cars up to Mt Morris for eventual loading at Kable. The Way Freight also brought up cars of ink, paper, and coal for the plant, as well as cars for the various other trackside industries. The Lake States SmugMug site has a several photos by Ritzman and Cole showing these operations. The Mt Morris branch was a very interesting operation, showing the level of coordination required to service an important customer. Rich G
On Tuesday, September 23, 2025 at 09:10:53 AM CDT, Fred Hilgenberg via groups.io <hilgy1954=comcast.net@groups.io> wrote:
I found this great shot credited to Marty Bernard in Mt Morris dated September 3, 1964. So classic. I first saw it on this blog:
Later I found the original on Flickr:
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Grateful Fred
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