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Nostalgia & History > Cleaning an IC Green Diamond at West ColtonDate: 09/15/12 20:54 Cleaning an IC Green Diamond at West Colton Author: SP8595 For a stretch of time in late 1985 and early 1986, Southern Pacific had some pool power arrangement with the Illinois Central Gulf that brought some interesting ICG visitors all the way out to California. The problem was that they seemed to arrive in the morning and depart in the afternoon, coming directly out of the sun in both directions. This is exemplified by back-lit Southern Pacific B36-7 7768 leading SP B30-7 7853, IC GP40 3018 and Gulf Mobile & Ohio GP35 620 waiting for a signal ahead at Colton Crossing, the diamond across the Santa Fe and Union Pacific mainline. A very friendly conductor was on this train and he hopped off of the engines and is seen here next to the power talking to another railfan. Talk soon shifted to these strange visitors from the Mid-West and somewhere in the conversation mention was made of how dirty the IC engine was and that the herald was hard to see. Incredibly the conductor asked if we wanted to get up in the engine and clean the herald while leaning out of the cab! Heck Yea!! Unfortunately in the excitement we forgot to close the cab windows. Here are the before and after shots of a somewhat cleaner herald. Simpler days for sure!
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/15/12 21:00 by SP8595.    Date: 09/15/12 21:54 Re: Cleaning an IC Green Diamond at West Colton Author: GRNDMND Thanks go out to you and "that other fan", who looks vaguely familiar, for cleaning that Green Diamond. It was a shame what ICG did to both roads that formed it.
KC Date: 09/16/12 00:58 Re: Cleaning an IC Green Diamond at West Colton Author: Fizzboy7 WOW! Seems like a world ago when stuff like that was possible. Amazing
Date: 09/16/12 12:37 Re: Cleaning an IC Green Diamond at West Colton Author: Milwaukee GRNDMND Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------- > Thanks go out to you and "that other fan", who > looks vaguely familiar, for cleaning that Green > Diamond. It was a shame what ICG did to both roads > that formed it. > > KC Those ICG units make SP look like they deserve a good housekeeping award for clean units. Very difficult to photograph that IC unit as dirty as it was no matter what lighting was available. Thanks for sharing. What a pleasant surprise I'm sure back then. |