Nostalgia & History > Icicle breakers on the Coos Bay line?

The Coos Bay Hauler about to go around the Coos Bay Y and head towards? ...................... you guessed it...... Coos Bay, Oregon. As mentioned in the Ray Steven's HAIRCUT song. The power is SD-9s # 4427, 4372 and 4364 plus GP-9 #3759. All 3 of the SD-9s have the icicle breakers on them. Well, I suppose it might be possible that they need them, as the date of the photo is December 10th, 1981 and the time was 10:44 AM. The "friendly" SP, I really miss those good old days, the "friendly" employees and even the well weathered power and cabeese.

C.C.Chas.

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It's probably an optical delusion, but it looks like this might be a 5 unit consist. Of course I'm old and blind in one eye and unable see out of the other.

JDE

I enlarged the Hi-res (not the jpeg) scan in photoshop and there are only 4 units there, just as I wrote in my notes. 4 units was usually what the Coos Bay Hauler had around then. Unless they needed to replace a switcher along the line somewhere, then it would have 5 units. Wish I had chased it more now. But thankfully have some good photos and sound recordings of that train. One even pacing it from Tide to Mapleton. Will be using part of that recording in my program for the SPH&TS meet in Bakersfield in September.

C.C.Chas.

See, Charlie? I told you I was blind in one eye and couldn't see out of the other.

See in you Bakerspatch in September.

JDE

Is there any icicle-breaker equipped SD-9's left anywhere? The last one I saw was at Omnitrax when the PLA was picking out an ex-SP SD-9 to save. We had four to choose from. One with a chopped nose, the two NWP painted units and one in SP paint with icicle breakers. Unfortunately the one with the icicle breakers was partially stripped and in rough shape so it was a no-go. The other three units were in pretty good shape so it came down to selecting a unit based on cosmetic issues. The chopped nose unit was too much work to restore so we cherry picked the best of the two NWP units. That's how ex-NWP 4423, ex-SP 4423 came to Oakland to be restored by Howard Wise to it's original SP 5472.

The chopped nose was the DRGW 5305, had electrical fire in the cabinet if I remember correctly.