“I'm the train they call the City of New Orleans” I found myself at the Iconic 18th Street bridge photographing Amtrak movements for the second day in a row, but this time for something that’s actually rare. The 18th Street and Roosevelt Road bridges were packed with railfans trying to get photos of Amtrak’s City Of New Orleans as much as I was. The City Of New Orleans train was originated by the Illinois Central Gulf in 1947. It was a long distance passenger train that was pretty well known, and even had a song written about it! It ran from Chicago to New Orleans/vice versa. However, it was then overtaken and ran by Amtrak since 1971 which still ran on Illinois Central trackage. It still runs the same route to this day with trackage under CN ownership since the takeover of IC in 1999. Running 8 hours behind schedule into Chicago Union Station, the inbound Amtrak City of New Orleans #58 can be seen shoving into the south concourse of Union Station at 18th Street. This train left New Orleans on time with two of Amtrak’s newest additions to their locomotive fleet, a duo of Siemens Phase 7 ALC-42’s leading, both only being built in 2023. Enroute to Chicago, both 1 year old locomotives broke down along Canadian Nationals mainline down south. To prevent the passengers on this broken down train from being stranded, CN sent out a freight diesel to rescue it and take it to all the way to Chicago. Seeing a freight diesel pull an Amtrak train is uncommon as a whole, but this occasion was even more rare. 4 years before the Illinois Central was bought out by Canadian National, Illinois Central began purchasing the EMD SD70 locomotives in 1995. IC SD70 1027, a 30 year old freight diesel was sent out to bring the stranded Amtrak train all the way into Chicago. Making the famous Illinois Central City of New Orleans live and dance once again in 2024, even if it was only for a day! 1027 was one of the 40 IC SD70’s delivered to the Illinois Central, all of them rostered IC 1000-1039. The Illinois Central Railroad was bought out by Canadian National in 1999, and most of the SD70’s still wear their Illinois Central paint in 2024. Only 10 out of the 40 SD70’s have been painted into the Canadian National scheme in those 25 years since the merger. The rest of them still roam CN’s system decades later in their iconic Illinois Central “Deathstar” livery.
