Nostalgia & History > Sunday Matinee Rock Island passenger & commuter trains Chicago

It was 39 years ago that the ROCK was shut down, this video was shot mainly from ( I think) Roosevelt Road. Any info is appreciated

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Very nice and thanks for sharing.   The CRIP E-units were looking sharp in their new paint and it's always impressive to see how hard working the old E-6/AB6 units still were at that late date.  

Hard to believe how busy the CRIP freight yard there was at the time.   I assume the former UP E-units were there to lead a freight train?   

e unit bonanza, the quad cities rocket was huge, special event perhaps!   Run by the butterworth tours? which did lounge service when the Rock had money. and better track.
 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 03/31/19 10:44 by dan.

This looks to be about 1972 with the fresh UP E-units still not painted and just before RI 630 got the gold nose paintjob. Of note is all the brand new SP power the Rock is about to deliver to them off the Golden State route.

Great memory provoking shots - thanks for posting.  Spent a good deal of time
at Roosevelt Road in late 60's-early 70's.  The Rock was an operating museum !

Neato! Those E6s rolling along look even more graceful than I had pictured in my mind. Good to see my Grandfather's RR "live" and in motion...

Lance

Great stuff. Thanks for posting this!

- Jeff 

great stuff

Milwaukee Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
   I assume the former UP
> E-units were there to lead a freight train?   
Yes, the E units still in UP paint werre used on pig trains betweern 12th Street pig yard and Silvis.
657 and 659 were the 2 'A' units.
zr190

dan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
 the quad cities rocket was huge,
> special event perhaps!   

It would be nice to know what the occasion was; that is indeed a huge train and I'm surprised RI was able even in the early '70s to assemble that big of a train.  I guess the last intercity trains had come off only 2 years earlier but they still maintained a pretty good car supply apparently! 

Great video and man how good would that be if we had sound!?

Andy

https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,2882754,2886605#msg-2886605

njmidland Wrote: 
> They did charters to Chicago from the Quad Cities. 
> My understanding is they got into a payment 
> dispute with the Rock Island and RI stopped 
> handling their cars. 

The group tours (for baseball games, Christmas shopping trips, Ice Capades, even group outings for Boy and Girl Scout troops) were pretty well patronized in the early 1970s. No. 5/6 could (and did) swell to 12+ cars with 3 E's up front. Butterworth also promoted football specials from the Quad Cities to Iowa City for University Of Iowa home games, which were also generally well-patronized. 

The *other* part of his business was running his own cars as part of the regular Rocket consist, offering an all-inclusive first-class package that included breakfast or dinner. The RI welcomed the deal as they were supposed to get a per-mile fee for handling the car, plus all the food and beverages were sourced from the adjacent RI diner, which helped mitigate the losses incurred by the RI food service. 

The initial response to the service on the Quad City Rocket (Trains 5/6) was good and soon Butterworth expanded his service to include the Peoria Rocket (Trains 11/12), which allowed the RI to drop its own parlor car on that train. 

By late 1974 Butterworth Tours had gotten behind on their payments to the RI and, with bankruptcy on the immediate horizon, the RI could not afford to extend them further credit and pulled the plug. 

The typical car on 5/6 to Rock Island was BIG BEN, an ex-C&O/D&RGW Budd low-profile dome-lounge originally built for the stillborn CHESSIE. The Peoria service typically featured a pre-war ex-PRR observation car, THE REVELER or the sleeper-lounge BONNIE B (which may have been ex-IC). 

Other cars that Butterworth Tours owned or leased could and did show up on the Rockets, sometimes deadheading to a charter gig, subbing for his regular cars and, in the case of the ex-DL&W diner, leased by the RI to cover when one of their last two diners (411 and 428) was in the shop. 

It should be noted Bill Butterworth was very much a supporter of the Rock Island's passenger service and worked hard to promote it with his group tours and other ventures. He was one of the principals behind the "Ride The Rockets" group that tried to promote use of the trains in the era immediately after the creation of Amtrak. The trains might not have lasted as long as they did without his efforts. 

Great stuff, Aussiehinz, your photos sure take me back to long summer evenings watching Nos. 5 and 11 blow through Utica and, as I got older, plunking down a whole $1.00 for a ticket from Ottawa to LaSalle, just to have a Coke in the diner and watch my house go by the window... 

NZ

A lot to take in.
Thanks for the wonderful film.
Gary 

It's not as though the Rock Island wasn't trying.  Gosh, they had new Pullman Standard & Budd Bi-levels!  Engines might have been a little behind the curve.  They had a great market to Quad Cities, but it all fell apart unnfortunately.

Wow that stuff is great! The Rock could really put on a show and did they ever! Glad you were there to record it and thanks for posting it.

Awesome historical footage. I am trying to remember but when I hired out in 1972 I don't recall the Quad Cities carrying the baggage car, except perhaps on a Butterworth tours special to handle all the luggage. That longer train with the Butterworth "Big Ben" on the rear was definitely expanded train for one of his tours. You always have to love the #630 E-6 and the two AB-6's, #750/751, they ran as well. That really long conventional coach commuter with the two E-8's appears to be the Joliet Banker's special.
I used to catch train #01 out of the 12th Street piggy yard and on the weekends it would have the E's for power to Silvis and then on ther return train #02 the next morning. And sometimes there would be the better freight power with the SP units mixed in to pull these trains. Before I leftin 1976 they had started another Trailer train service out of 12th Street with train 55 which went to Denver to the Rio Grande.
Also he captured the depot switcher as well.

Bob Krieger
Cheyenne, WY

Wonderful video!

 To further narrow down when the scenes were filmed, one can see the Grand Central Station trainshed in the background around 4:56 in the video.  That station was razed in 1971.