Nostalgia & History > Walking Through the Rock Island Roster, Part 13, More E-units

1. CRI&P E8A 651 was involved in the Montgomery Wreck.  See https://railfan44.blogspot.com/2014/01/major-passenger-train-wreck-montgomery.html

2. I took this photo in St. Paul, MN on June 14, 1964 near SPUD. The train was the Twin Star Rocket running between the North Star State and the Lone Star State. 652 is an E8A built in 1952 and the B-unit was an E7B.  652 was nicknamed "The turkey engine" in the mid sixties after cutting a reefer truck of frozen turkeys in two South of Fairibaut, MN.  To quote the engineer Leo, "we counted 16 frozen turkeys in the cab and they came thru the windshield like cannonballs". He was cut by flying glass somewhat.

3, 4, 5, and 6. CRI&P Train 6, the Quad Cities Rocket with E8A 652 up front making its station stop at Joliet, IL on March 29, 1971.  In 56 minutes she should be against the bumper posts in LaSalle Street Station. The dome/observation car was BIG BEN and breakfast was being served.   Nebraska Zephyr wrote awhile back, "While I'm sure the passengers in BIG BEN were served a delicious.  Chances are good that car behind BIG BEN is RI 411 GOLDEN BOWL, a coffee shop-lounge that was the regular car on Nos. 5-6. RI 428 EL COMEDOR (from the stillborn Golden Rocket) was the "regular" on Nos. 11-12 to Peoria."

Enjoy,
Marty Bernard

 

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/19 15:20 by MartyBernard.

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WOW, your Rock Island shots just keep getting better! Those red and yellow E’s are awesome. Brings back great memories from when we rode the QC Rocket right about that same time. We gotta bring the Rock back somehow!

Sincere thnks for your Rock series.  I had numerous
opportunities to travel to/thru Chicago in the late '60's
and early 70's, and would spend as much time as possible
at Roosevelt Road or at Joliet.  The Rock was indeed an
operating museum, with Christine, etc.  Thanks for the
memories.

Great slides. I appreciate the Twin Star Rocket slide as that was the pre Amtrak passenger train I saw most often as a boy.  --Kelly



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/16/19 17:14 by UP951West.

2 questions,
1. Could the 651 be repaired, or was the carbody a part of the frame, and damaged beyound repair?
2. When did EMD and/or the railroads start to put mu hoses on the fireman's side of E and F units?

Thanks.

Sam 

Trainhand Wrote:
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> 2 questions,
> 1. Could the 651 be repaired, or was the carbody a
> part of the frame, and damaged beyound repair?

E and F units don't have a thick steel frame like a hood unit. Underneath the outerskin of that carbody is basically a truss bridge that provides strength and rigidity to the floor and the frame members. This allows the rather thinly-constructed floor (still fairly beefy, but thin compared to an SD40-2) to hold the innards up off the tracks and take the buff and draft (stretching and compression) forces involved in pulling a traIn. A poor-man's analogy would be the old Chrysler Uni-Body construction

So, yes, 651's back was broken and while I suppose a shop with enough time, manpower and materials to spare could have fixed her, it would be an extremely labor-intensive process to insure all the trusses and carbody braces were "square" again. The Rock probably decided for that amount of money they could either get by with one less 12-year-old E8, or buy a surplus E unit used from another railroad or far less (which they indeed did in 1968, acquiring a number of ex-UP E8s, both As and Bs). 

You can bet Silvis shops stripped her of every useful piece of hardware in order to keep the other Es running.

> 2. When did EMD and/or the railroads start to put
> mu hoses on the fireman's side of E and F units?

Probably when the railroads found it necessary to MU locomotives nose-to-nose.

The Burlington was one of the last holdouts on the "engineer-side-only" MU hoses, since they had a penchant for running their E units "elephant style." In the early 70s, when the West Suburban Mass Transit District (WSMTD) paid Morrison-Knudsen to overhaul 25 former CB&Q E8s and E9s for Chicago-Aurora suburban service, the locos returned with MU hose fixtures only on the right-hand (Engineer's) side of the noses, since they would *always* face the same direction (west) in push-pull service.

When the Chicago Chapter NRHS ran their "Farewell to the Es" excursion in 1992, they had three units, the first two coupled back-to-back, the third coupled nose-to-nose with the second. The BN "Zephyr Pit" had to apply special extension hoses between the nose-to-nose units in order to connect the MU hoses under the coupler and across to the other side of the other unit. This I saw myself and can swear to it. Sadly, I did not check between the back-to-back units to see if they were set up the same way.

NZ