Nostalgia & History > Ellinor, KS in simpler days

Time marches onward. If you don’t stay ahead of the changes the ‘old stuff’ is lost forever...

1. AT&SF 3604 leads a Texas-bound manifest through the crossover plant at Ellinor, KS on October 17, 1982.

2. BNSF 6750 on a westbound manifest through a re-configured Ellinor, KS on July 9, 2023.
(Image previously posted)

Thanks for looking back & forth!
Lance Garrels
santafe199

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Excellent then and now look!  It really drives home the realization of how homogenized the RR scene is now. This would be a good one for your comm code line series too with pole lines on both sides of the track!

Andy

AndyBrown Wrote: > ... homogenized ... RR scene ...

That's a great description! I've also used the word "sterile" at times. Especially when looking at those Erector Set signals. Not to worry, though. 50 years from now some (unborn) railfan will marvel at the antiques in my second image... ;^)

Lance

Really cool seeing the before and after. The clean simple composition of #1 with the classic signal hardware and blue bonnets is really nice. 

Both great shots!  Interesting engine consist in the first one, GP39-2 and three old heads.
👍 to "Erector Set signals", sure miss those old searchlights and cantilevers!
Chico

Nice comparison and a big dif. By the looks of the slop power and trailing tonnage, this could be the 315 daily junk freight to Dallas that I would soon start seeing a couple of years later when I moved to big D...

JG

jgilmore Wrote: > ... this could be the 315 daily junk freight ...

In our neck-o-the-woods train 315 tended to be a pretty decent train. Actually, the fastest I ever rode the head end of a freight train was on a 315 that qualified for 70 MPH. It was a little rocket of a train, and my engineer got frisky! We topped the Flint Hills and I timed a couple of mile posts @ 81 MPH. No schitzke! The real dog through Emporia was the 365, which usually showed up in that wonderful Midnight ~ 4 AM slot. It was like a double penalty. Catch a DOG of a train during crappy, no sleep hours. My fellow SFe brakeman from those days, Dave Franz thought this train looked like main line local train 1311. But when I worked the 1311-12 our on duty time at Emporia was always 2330. So I'm thinking this is some typical OK/TX-bound junker, maybe an overflow. 2nd section of the 365...

Lance

Very Nice then and now series. The then picture sure is the Cat's Meow!

Larry

A rather impressive before and after.
—Mac

santafe199 Wrote:
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 But when I
> worked the 1311-12 our on duty time at Emporia was
> always 2330. So I'm thinking this is some typical
> OK/TX-bound junker, maybe an overflow. 2nd section
> of the 365...

Sounds very plausible, I guess from memory I can't recall seeing any 365 come to Dallas, at least when I lived close to the Dallas cutoff in the mid- to late-80s. Probably went to OKC, Gainesville, Temple or Houston like you said...

JG

Love then and now photos, and this is a good pair.

Roger Durfee
Akron, OH