Model Railroading > Rock Island Mixed Train in Iowa

One of the joys of model railroading has always been the ability to recreate moments from the past.
This afternoon, I stopped by Mike Porter's place in KC to photograph the Rock Island combine #2893 that I built for him. The photo below was inspired by the one actual photo of this combine that I've seen, with it running on the RI's Estherville-Cedar Rapids, IA mixed train in 1961. Unfortunately, in those days, these trains were hardly glamorous, ran through underpopulated areas, and both film and travel cost a lot of money, so they were very rarely photographed.
Ahh... to go back in time!

Photo 2: As a point of reference, here's the prototype photo that I'm referencing. It's found in Hasting's book "Remember the Rock."

Thanks for looking back,
- Jeff Carlson

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That's great! Good way to bring those memories back!

Regards, Jim Evans

That was one of my favorite photo sets in that book.

Nice re-creation train of the historic photo!

Cheers, Jim Fitch

Nice job on the combine.

Great re-creation and in B&W too. Thanks for bringing back a piece of the past. My RI commuter coaches should arrive this weekend and I will be doing some re-creating myself. I had 4 years on the ROCK working out of the Chicago area and Joliet.

Bob Krieger
Cheyenne, WY

Yeah, it's a really good book that flies under the radar, it seems.

- Jeff

CPR_4000 Wrote:
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> That was one of my favorite photo sets in that
> book.

Thanks a lot!

- Jeff

SPDRGWfan Wrote:
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> Nice re-creation train of the historic photo!
>
> Cheers, Jim Fitch

Thanks!

You can see more of the car itself in this thread from a while back:
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?3,4161565,4161565#msg-4161565

- Jeff

ATSF3751 Wrote:
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> Nice job on the combine.

Bob3985 Wrote:
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> Great re-creation and in B&W too. Thanks for
> bringing back a piece of the past.

Oh, I've got a color version of this on my computer, but for the purposes of quasi-recreating those Hastings photographs, B&W was the way to go.

> My RI commuter coaches should arrive this weekend and I will be
> doing some re-creating myself.

Who's making the commuter coaches? Which variety of cars?

- Jeff Carlson

Please share the color version of the photo if you have it!

Ask, and ye shall receive!

- Jeff Carlson

ghemr Wrote:
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> Please share the color version of the photo if you
> have it!

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bnsfsd70 Wrote:
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> Ask, and ye shall receive!
>
> - Jeff Carlson

Very nice-----I'm glad I asked!!