Days of the Diesel

Frank writes…

As always, the big news this second weekend of August was Diesel Days, when incessant rumbling and acrid smoke fill the air in East Union.

The major highlight, I suppose, was the unveiling of the newly repainted Ingersoll-Rand 91, our 100-year-old boxcab diesel. Jamie and the Diesel Department guys outdid themselves again, putting this thing back into gleaming bicentennial colors for the 250th. IR 91 was new for the 150th, painted like this for the 200th, and repainted like this for the 250th. With luck, it will be running again long before the tercentennial!

For fans of things less than 100 years old - and these fans are rumored to exist, though I have my doubts - another highlight was operation of our recently acquired SD70MAC, shown here during its stint as a Take the Throttle engine.

Late in the afternoon, Metra dropped off our Illinois Central MU cars, now safely back at home after an eventful trip to home rails in Chicago that, by all accounts, went extremely well. Metra's "250th" locomotive was one of the two engines doing the hauling, and it was brought over to the property for a quick photo shoot with the 91, as shown above. Better photos can be found in various places online.

I spent a while needle-chipping in the 451, but failed to get a progress photo. Oops. I did take about an hour off to show a friend from college around, and then after service ended, I helped Zach, Joel, Jimmy, Steven, Nick, and Greg with some switch moves to get the IC MU cars back into their usual spot in Barn 6. Above, ComEd 4 and CCW 300 wait for a block of diesels to clear the streetcar line.

The MU cars were brought in by the Army diesel as the light started to fail; ComEd 4 was the planned motive power, but its governor was being balky, so the 8537 was called in.