Nostalgia & History > Water Level Wednesday: "Chicago Lights"

One of the oddities of railfanning the Water Level Route in New York has been the tendency for the shops in Selkirk to accumulate power on the weekends, and then send it out all at once.  For many years, extending into the CR era, it was common to run a gigantic light power move west from Selkirk on Sunday afternoons.  The dispatcher would refer to them as "Chicago Lights", so presumably they were headed all the way west.   I haven't seen this happen as much after the CSX takeover, but it does still happen.

So anyway, here we are at the Pattersonville bridge ove the Mohawk in August of 1977 watching a 12-unit Chicago Lights move.  Judging by the frame numbers, I ran out of film just before the last few units came into view.

The CN unit is on lease, the rest is  a dog's breakfast of early Conrail road power.
 

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Title made me think I'd be seeing in the background Chicago city lights at night.

Great catch for both the lashup and the reflection.
Bob

A wild collection of power.

KG

A similar move was very common westbound out of Harrisburg on the former Pennsylvania Railroad main, usually on Sundays. Going back to the 1960's, there was a tonnage imbalance on the old PRR, with more loads going eastbound, and empties westbound. Another factor was the typical weekly pattern, with traffic building to an end-of-week peak on Friday or Saturday. By the weekend, there was an accumulation of power on the east end of the system, while the points west would be short of power. During the 1960's PRR would regularly run a batch of locomotives westbound out of Harrisburg or Enola. I can remember seeing this "train of engines", usually with GP9's and F Units, passing through Altoona and Johnstown about mid-day on Sunday. It seemed that 9 to 12 units was typical. I'm not sure how far west it went. It could have terminated at Conway, where the power could have been distributed toward Chicago or St Louis as needed. This move continued through the PC years, and into the Conrail era, almost always on Sunday. I'm not sure if NS does a similar move today, as I moved out of PA 20 years ago, perhaps some local observers could advise if this still happens.