All in the family; a visit to a joint meeting of two railroad historical societies: UP and C&NW

Look at all that power on display for the Union Pacific and Chicago & North Western historical societies in downtown Omaha earlier this month. Jim Wrinn photo.

OMAHA – I stood on a bridge at Crescent, Iowa, Sunday before last to watch spanking clean Union Pacific SD70AH No. 8897, the last two unpatched Chicago & North Western units, Nos. 8646 and 8701, and a UP geep head east on the point of a long manifest. Buried deep in the train was a single distributed power unit, UP’s C&NW heritage unit No. 1995. The locomotives were pulling train MCBPR-7 from Council Bluffs, Iowa, to Proviso Yard in Chicago after the units were on display most of the week in downtown Omaha for the first ever joint meeting of the two railroad affinity groups. For fans leaving the joint Union Pacific Historical Society / Chicago & North Western Historical Society meeting and heading east, this was a real treat, and I know more than a few of them gave chase.

Having the four units on display at the Amtrak station in Omaha was a nice way for UP to acknowledge its fans in its headquarters city. With traffic off and many units in storage (and unfortunately several hundred train crew employees furloughed), I figure it wasn’t hard to idle these units. It’s too bad the C&NW heritage unit and the two unpatched units didn’t go out together on the head-end of the Chicago-bound train, but that’s real railroading. I’m told that a balloon track in Council Bluffs, Iowa, was part of getting the units set up to head east the morning the meeting broke up, so you take what you can get, right?

Big Boy No. 4023 gets a bath as a rain shower passes over Omaha, Neb. on June 6, 2015. Jim Wrinn photo.

I only caught three days of the UP/C&NW meeting. I was there long enough to hear presentations on the restoration of Chicago & North Western 4-6-0 No. 1385 at Mid-Continent Railway Museum and updates on work that UP is doing on its own goodwill ambassadors, 4-8-4 No. 844 and Big Boy No. 4014. I took the UPHS/C&NWHS bus tour of Omaha and Council Bluffs sites, and enjoyed a stop at the Union Pacific Museum in Council Bluffs (Visit hint for this must-see museum: Do not miss trying your hand with the interactive exhibit about laying track for the first transcontinental railroad; it is good fun.) and the Omaha Road depot in the Florence neighborhood as well as a visit to see Big Boy No. 4023 and Centennial No. 6900 forever on display in Kenefick Park at Lauritzen Gardens high above I-80. We did a quick drive-by of RailsWest Railroad Museum at the old Rock Island depot in Council Bluffs, where UP 4-8-4 No. 814 is on display; sometime I hope to catch this museum when it is open for a better look.

The real treat on the bus tour was a guided tour of UP’s Harriman Dispatch Center. The dispatch center is actually built inside an 1800s freighthouse that we were told was the location where the UP was sold out of receivership in 1897. Out of concern for the potential for tornadoes and out of respect for the fact that the center runs almost the entire railroad system (exceptions, parts of Texas and California), UP built the dispatch center out of reinforced concrete inside the old freight house. As a result, the hardened dispatch center structure is lovingly known as “the bunker.”  Outside of the bunker is a building decorated with artifacts from the company, among them a safe, a clock from the Omaha shop, and a desk that more than a century ago, we were told, belonged to the center’s namesake, UP President E.H. Harriman. Today, of course, the dispatchers CTC control panels of old are long gone, replaced years ago with video screens and mouse pads, but still interesting nevertheless.     

In an age when many of organized railfan groups are struggling, this event offered a lot to like. With an attendance of more than 330, the joint meeting appeared to be a hit and hopefully it was profitable for the two host organizations. Such affinity groups meetings provide good value for those who can afford to travel to be there.