Nostalgia & History > BN at McCook, NE : Before the Final Filing

A few years ago, I came across a bunch of railroad negatives at, believe it or not, a garage sale. I bought them all and
they included Mopac, Rock Island, Santa Fe and BN stuff along with a number of depots of the respective roads mentioned.
I have finally gotten around to getting them ready for filing in my permanent files.
I have never been to McCook, NE and although I knew it was a crew change point on BN's Denver Line, I never realized that they
had such a big yard there.
Here are some views of the BN at McCook. Dates and the photographer are unknown.

1) The BN/Amtrak depot at McCook.

2) A pair of SD45s splice a former CB&Q unit in the yard at McCook. I have never seen the C&S letters above the number boards.
I have seen them under the cab windows in small letters, but never above the number boards.

3) Rear end crews change on the depot platform at McCook. I assume this is a westbound and with the trailers maybe a 61 train?
Note the box cars in the background. Merger partners. The only thing missing is SP&S that I can think of.

Thanks for looking

Bob Helling
PRose



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/04/13 09:36 by PRose.

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It was a Division HQ and DS office

Great photos! Keep them coming!

The train changing crews in the last photo is eastbound; the depot was on the north side of the main line, the yard on the south side. There was a footbridge across the tracks just west of the depot, as I recall, probably leading over to the roundhouse that was located south of the yard. I suspect the first two photos, and possibly the third, were taken from that bridge. I am guessing the date to be in the mid 1970's.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 12/04/13 10:11 by czephyr17.

Those 40ft boxcars are a sure sign-o-the-times! Cool stuff.

Lanzo

Fortunately the big depot building is still there in nice condition and in use by the BNSF. It looks like Amtrak still stops there but boy you'd never know it by walking around the depot or going inside the waiting area. Not much of anything to even tell you when the "CZ" arrives.

Awesome look back. Especially like all the BN predecessor boxcars in the yard.
JB

The BN cut up massive numbers of 40' boxcars in the 1981 recession. That would date these photos to the period when the 6' door cars were still being used to haul grain off light rail branch lines or slightly after when the cars were being collected for their trip to the scrapper.

The 40' cars farther back seem to be parked on a wash track for cleaning and those could be wooden or paper grain doors in the openings.

The C&S sublettering above the engine numbers were a common feature of C&S and FW&D units after the merger.

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Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/04/13 18:08 by fbe.

The fact that there is still a Burlington painted locomotive in one of the photos dates them to pre-1977, when BN finished repainting the fleet.