Steam & Excursion > Mine Run Power Standing By

The Illinois Central Railroad had a small yard at DuQuoin, Illinois, where coal traffic was gathered from branches reaching into the southern Illinois coal fields.  In 1955, several Mikados were stationed there for mine runs onto Eldorado and Zeigler districts.

1.  June 18, 1955, found Mikado #1285 easing past with a caboose.  It's hard to know for sure since what remains of this yard today bears little resemblence, but I suspect the photographer is standing on the east side in the late afternoon.  The locomotive is either moving the caboose around after arriving with coal loads from the mines, or has arrived with a caboose hop after dropping empties at a mine or at the yard at Benton.

2. The next month, a trio of Mikes are standing by at DuQuoin.  On the left is #1531, one of the "improved Mikados."  Just exactly what tinkering the I.C. had done to the 1500's that they hadn't done to the 1200's by the late steam era, I'm not sure.  Some of the Mikes were still hand-fired to the end but #1205's tender shows the hatch for the stoker engine, so these locomotives aren't in that group.

Story has it that the last hand-fired Mike in Carbondale was retired when the engine crews refused to take it.  It was late in the steam era as diesels had taken over most of the mainline runs, and numerous Mikes were assigned the branch lines with all but one being stoker engines.  So the story went, the fireman took one look at the engine he was assigned and said "no thanks."  So did the next couple of men they called.  The apparent concerted effort was effective, as the engine was set aside and never fired up again.  I've got no evidence to back up that story, but it does make a good tale.

Mary McPherson
Dongola, IL
Diverging Clear Productions

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Mary.....sounds like there were lazy bums in 1955......same as today.            Mary where do you get those negatives and color slides?    They are great pictures.    Who took them.all?   Thanks.

I remember these Mikes working the coal fields in western Kentucky as well.

Excellent images, Mary, and a neat story (whether tall tale or true) to go with them. Thanks for posting them for us to enjoy.

Keystone1 Wrote:
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> Mary where do you get those negatives and color slides?

eBay.  I keep my eye on certain ongoing searches and go after select images or sets that come along.



> Who took them all?

That's tricky.  Many of the steam era I.C. slides are from Al Chione slide sets that were sold; either individually, or in sets.  Recently I picked up three batches of 60 slides, making 180 total.  While they have all been scanned, only some of the raw scans have been "cleaned up" with the color, brightness and contrast adjusted and dust specks removed.  I've also come up with sets that were once sold by Evda Slides and other duplicate sellers.  None of them actively sell slides any more, which is why I will post some of them here; if they were trying to make money from them at this point, I wouldn't be posting them.

The black and white images are a little trickier.  A few of them have a name attached, but most of them do not.  If I know the photographer's name, I'll mention it.  Otherwise, it was just a negative with (hopefully) some basic information such as date and location, but no photographer credit.  Occasionally it will have bad location information with it, but I know the region well enough that I will be able to correct that information.

An aside:  I recently helped out the Center For Railroad Photography And Art that had a J. Parker Lamb shot of ICRR 2613 that was misidentified as being at DuBois, south of Centralia.  It actually was taken about five minutes from my house.

Occasionally I'll come up with several images taken by the same person on the same day, where you can place a sequence together and figure out what the action was and what the photographer was doing.  A great example of this was a series of Illinois Central #2600 departing Markham Yard.  I ended up acquiring three negatives in the space of a few years that show the train in the yard prior to departure, passing through the Homewood interlocking, and south of Homewood at Flossmoor.  It's fun to picture the photographer doing the same sort of "leapfrogging" the train that we do today.

When the time comes, I plan to donate my multi-media collection to the archives of the Monticello Railway Museum.  I very much believe that a body of work (such as the George Redmond photo / video collection or my photography) should be kept together, rather than scattered to the wind.  Other collected images, such as seen here, are just icing on the cake.  And don't get me started on the vintage LP record and railroad video library, which combined consists of hundreds of titles, or the bookcase full of books going back to the forties (came up with a signed copy of Mixed Train Daily).

Do I need to get a life?!?!?!?

Mary McPherson
Dongola, IL
Diverging Clear Productions