Nostalgia & History > Along the B&OCT Part 2 - Broadway

More pictures from the summer of 1969.

Broadway street crossing when you could park your bicycles right next to the gate tower.

Most of the trains pictured are on the IHB, but the B&OCT owns and maintains it from here to McCook
so I will count them as "along the B&OCT".

1. How about a lighting striped IHB switcher number 8824.

2. On the Rock Island a trio of E-units appear with an inbound freight. It must be a weekend because those
units are all regular weekday Suburban power. The 648 is in the lead with a fresh coat of "Material Service"
red and yellow. (Henry Crown was a major stockholder in the Rock Island as well as the Material Service company.
The Material Service cement trucks and barges were painted in similar colors.) Are those E-units reminiscing
about past times working together on the Golden State??

3. A northbound PC on the IHB with an Alco in the lead



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 01/31/15 08:11 by Englewood.

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4. A Milwaukee Road coming south on the IHB. Perhaps a Terre Haute train?
Check out that B&O caboose! I don't recall why I didn't take a picture of that
B&O train. Probably just some mundane power like Alco switchers.

5. The only B&O train I did get. Not a good picture but I include it as representative
of what you could see then. A mix of 1st and 2nd generation power and a bay window caboose.

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Englewood Wrote:
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> More pictures from the summer of 1969.
>

> 3. A northbound PC on the IHB with an Alco in the
> lead

LS1 or LS11 run through to Proviso. I always wondered if the crews on those trains were NYC running through instead of IHB crews, on FTD. The Harbor was a 40 mph railroad and most crews ran every bit of that (or more). LS1 and LS11 plodded along at around 10 mph or less. Getting them through Argo, C&A, and McCook was an ordeal. You couldn't just hold them (as is the practice today) because trains would just back up behind them worse than then already were, so it took come careful plotting among the towermen and a lot of looking out windows to get a fine fix on what to do when (neither of which happen in the 21st Century).

Usually, the dispatcher had LS1 or LS11 go the westbound main out of McCook and anything behind up the East Passing Track as crossing those (jokingly known as) Lake Shore Hotshots over into the EPT would not only block GM&O and Santa Fe for a long time, they would block the eastbound Harbors, giving a bigger mess to clean up with Santa Fe, GM&O, westbound Harbors, and Eastbound Harbors backed up.

TAW

Englewood Wrote:
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> 4. A Milwaukee Road coming south on the IHB.
> Perhaps a Terre Haute train?

yup

They were known as Southeasterns. Those guys got over the road whenever they could, but the Harbor dispatchers would sometimes hold them for hours, sometimes using them for switchtenders at LaGrange or Broadview...or both. Sometimes the would drop anchor in the East Passing Track at McCook. One night, there was a SE parked in the EPT when I came to work on 3rd trick at McCook. It was still there when I went home.

With operators only at North Harvey and Faithorn (Harvey was not a train order station), the B&OCT Chicago Heights subdivision wasn't flexible, but the need to hold a train for hours because it couldn't get on the B&CT at North Harvey never seemed reasonable.

> Check out that B&O caboose! I don't recall why I
> didn't take a picture of that
> B&O train. Probably just some mundane power like
> Alco switchers.


During the day, probably.

>
> 5. The only B&O train I did get.


A Road Elmer. At first I thought it was 68 coming back from Santa Fe. We used B&O power on 68 frequently, but it has a B&O caboose (and 209, the other job that often got road power during the day) would have had a train coming back from the St. Paul. B&OCT jobs used B&OCT cabooses. You were there during daylight, so the only B&O due was 98, but he should have had a train. Either this is a light to Garrett to balance crew and power, or it is the Garrett Local really late (should go right behind the Advance Dixie, something like 3am on duty.

TAW

> Not a good
> picture but I include it as representative
> of what you could see then. A mix of 1st and 2nd
> generation power and a bay window caboose.

Every photo a classic! Extra PC 2401 west out of Elkhart likely got on the Kankakee Branch at HF Tower, South Bend and thence IHB ("the Road of Friendly Service") hours ahead.

The eastward Milwaukee Road extra I would guess is headed for the Barr Yard if the switch just ahead is reversed; I often saw these Barr transfers with F's but the Southeasterns traveling the Chicago Heights Sub. usually had the 900 series rebuilds and I rarely saw F's on the trainsheets at North Harvey or Harvey Towers. And saw only one F on a Southeastern personally during my years on that line.

The IHB olive green with orange lightning stripes I think was their best paint scheme of all. The Rock photo is a gem with a seldom seen perspective. And the B&O light power is too cool. Thanks for the great shots.

Rich

Seventyfive Wrote:
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> Every photo a classic! Extra PC 2401 west out of
> Elkhart likely got on the Kankakee Branch at HF
> Tower, South Bend and thence IHB ("the Road of
> Friendly Service") hours ahead.
>
> The eastward Milwaukee Road extra I would guess is
> headed for the Barr Yard if the switch just ahead
> is reversed;

Not in 1969. All of the MILW transfer was done by 202 (? - I think 202 was MILW and 209 was CNW) to Western Ave and later Bensenville. There was also a Robey Street job to MILW at Western Ave. Both jobs had a train both ways (unusual for interline transfers in the 60s). MILW didn't start bring a train to BOCT until after I left in 1972.

The only MILW trains on IHB back then were the Southeasterns and the St. Paul jobs to the stockyards from Bensenville.

> I often saw these Barr transfers with
> F's but the Southeasterns traveling the Chicago
> Heights Sub. usually had the 900 series rebuilds
> and I rarely saw F's on the trainsheets at North
> Harvey or Harvey Towers. And saw only one F on a
> Southeastern personally during my years on that
> line.

They were the standard power in the 60s, along with an occasional set of CFA-16-4s http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,1079488,1079488#1079488

TAW