Community Response |
Locomotive Details |
Location/Date of Photo |
| Views: 5,777 Favorited: 22 | Since added on February 20, 2011 | |
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» Chicago & North Western Railroad (more..) » Alco C628 (more..) |
» Unknown » Rock, Michigan, USA (more..) » November, 1981 |
Locomotive No./Train ID |
Photographer |
» CNW 6730 (more..) » CNW X-6730 East (more..) |
» Chuck Schwesinger (more..) » Contact Photographer · Photographer Profile |
Remarks & Notes |
November is deer season in Upper Michigan, with both bow hunting and rifle season taking up most of the month. Whats that have to do with railroading you may ask? Things are surely different now but in the mid 70's to mid 80's just about everyone who could book off was gone hunting. This caused a number of crew shortages and some fairly raw train crews were assembled on more than a few occasions. In this case the head end crew on this ore job had been getting lots(and I mean a steady stream) of advice from the veteran conductor who was riding in the caboose all the way from Partridge. Train handling was quite an issue with the CNW's fleet of WWII and Korean war era ore cars. C628's could make short work of knuckles and draw bars if you were not extremely careful. In this case the young engineer had probably about heard enough and as the train came out of a sag near the Rock depot he really notched them out. As he roared past he had a S... eating grin on his face as the slack rolled out with thunderous bang. In about 40 seconds this train was in 3 pieces and the smiling engineer was really getting a speech from one very irate Conductor. After a couple hour delay getting a knuckle fixed and setting out a car with a bad draw bar this job continued on to Escanaba at a much slower pace. Power on this mid November afternoon was 6730,6715 and 6707. |
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Photo Comments (1) |
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