Your friendly neighborhood CNW fan.
The Lake Superior Railroad Museum in Duluth, MN owns a fair amount of former C&NW equipment.
C&NW Parlor/Lounge #6700 The Deerpath. C&NW 6700, formerly 6700, the Deerpath, formerly 6511, was built in 1946 for the Twin Cities 400 by Pullman Standard. It was configured as a 1 drawing room, 22 seat parlor car. In 1961 the car was modified with the removal of the drawing room and the adjacent smoking lounge. At this time the car's conventional 32-volt power system was also removed and replaced with a 480-volt system that was compatible with the C&NW bi-level commuter equipment. From then until retirement it served as a club lounge on Chicago commuter trains.
We own two former C&NW bi-levels, both of which are reapinted in full C&NW livery.
The last piece of C&NW equipment is BUDD Car #9169, which is a RDC-1, was former C&NW, and is the oldest operating Budd Car in the world.
Mechanical Department "No no that's fine shove that 20 pound set all around the yard... those shoes aren't hell and a half to change..."
The Missabe Road: Safety First
nordique72 wrote: Cris,Those ex-RI hoppers are still running around on UP's vast system, we still get quite a few of them on the grain shuttles that come down to the Gulf ports via Houston. The cars in speed lettering are harder to see because they are in the as-delivered scheme from 1973-74, when the Rock reorganized in 1975 and changed their colors to the "bankruptcy" blue- older hoppers were randomly cycled through the shops for new coats of paint. After the CNW picked them up- some were grey- most were blue. CNW fully patched some, while some others only got new numbers and a little CNW herald stencil. As this paint wore of over the years- the cars were repatched with the new sans-serif CNW style numbers, and the speed lettering was blanked out as well. I would say 1 out of every 10 grey cars that I see still have the speed lettering on them, while the rest have been patched. And yes- the CNW did jump at the trustee's offering of those hoppers, as well as several hundred boxcars (40 and 50 foot), gondolas, and airslides. The hoppers were mainly picked up to help with car supply on their newly aquired ex-RI grain lines in Iowa (and the Spine line.) Other cars and locomotives were simply returned to their financier- like the ex-UP/RI hopper Mark photographed- those were financed for RI by UP, and when they went belly-up the cars were returned to UP.
Cris,
Those ex-RI hoppers are still running around on UP's vast system, we still get quite a few of them on the grain shuttles that come down to the Gulf ports via Houston.
The cars in speed lettering are harder to see because they are in the as-delivered scheme from 1973-74, when the Rock reorganized in 1975 and changed their colors to the "bankruptcy" blue- older hoppers were randomly cycled through the shops for new coats of paint. After the CNW picked them up- some were grey- most were blue. CNW fully patched some, while some others only got new numbers and a little CNW herald stencil. As this paint wore of over the years- the cars were repatched with the new sans-serif CNW style numbers, and the speed lettering was blanked out as well. I would say 1 out of every 10 grey cars that I see still have the speed lettering on them, while the rest have been patched.
And yes- the CNW did jump at the trustee's offering of those hoppers, as well as several hundred boxcars (40 and 50 foot), gondolas, and airslides. The hoppers were mainly picked up to help with car supply on their newly aquired ex-RI grain lines in Iowa (and the Spine line.) Other cars and locomotives were simply returned to their financier- like the ex-UP/RI hopper Mark photographed- those were financed for RI by UP, and when they went belly-up the cars were returned to UP.
To add to Nordique72's observations, at various terminals in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, and Wyoming I've seen old Rock Island ballast cars sporting CNW reporting marks. These cars are full of ballast and often are coupled to flatcars loaded with track panels. Together this equipment appears to be in some kind of standby service - ready at a moment's notice for movement to a derailment site.
These well-weathered, mineral red ballast cars clearly display the name "Rock Island" in white letters are their car sides. The cars also have removable canvas covers on top to keep both water and rain out of the loads. Face it, ballast mixed with ice won't dump very easily.
Lord Atmo wrote:CNW's pullman standard 3-bay grain hoppers in the 750000 number series are all ex-CRIP as well
Atmo,
The Pullman Standard hopper cars are in the 752000-753000 series- there are no hoppers in the 750000 series. These are the cars I was talking about in the post that Bob had quoted in his reply. The ballast cars in his post are some of my favorite ex-Rock Island hoppers the CNW acquired- they are in the 791000 series. I can remember watching them go by in the ballast trains in Wisconsin, most of them have been removed from ballast unit train service and retired. Those that survive have been reassigned into the service Bob describes. I saw and photographed 3 of them in this service this summer at Clinton, IA- it was the first time I had seen one of them in several years.
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