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| A surprise meeting with Frisco #1522 in 1990 https://www.rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32406 |
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| Author: | FLO [ Thu Nov 17, 2011 12:58 am ] |
| Post subject: | A surprise meeting with Frisco #1522 in 1990 |
In Autumn of 1990 I was a college student in Galesburg, IL. On a warm day in late September/early October while I was sitting in my room, I heard out of the blue some blasts from a steam whistle... "What in the world???!!" Nope, this was not during Galesburg "Railroad Days." I hustled over to the West 3rd Street overpass with my camera, and there I found the most immaculate steam engine I had ever seen. I had no idea whose locomotive it was or what it was doing there, so it was definitely a surprise. There were quite a few people in hard hats that day and I guessed they were probably BN shop employees. I wondered if maybe they'd just done some repair work or something. I'm curious if the people shown in this shot were part of the 1522 steam crew. |
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| Author: | Frisco1522 [ Fri Nov 18, 2011 12:58 am ] |
| Post subject: | Re: A surprise meeting with Frisco #1522 in 1990 |
This was on what we sadly referred to as the "Death March". We were slated to run up to Minnesota for some sort of festival and on the way started having problems with the left front pilot truck bearing. We laid up at Camp Point, IL, removed the wheelset and bearing box and trucked it to Galesburg and then Mt. Pleasant, IA to remove scoring on the journal. Got her back together and made it to Bettendorf, IA. She seemed to be doing OK, so late that night we left and were way behind schedule. I got just north of Bettendorf and the overheat alarm went off again. We laid up there, cancelled the rest of the trip and worked some more on the bearing. At one time, we had the entire pilot truck out from under her and in the Galesburg shop where we retrammed, triple checked all dimensions and carefully got her back together. We started back home, where I ran her from Galesburg to Hannibal and she did fine on that leg and the rest of the way home. Early in the '91 season we lit out for another spin north and the damned thing cooked again. That's when we rebuilt the pilot truck with roller bearings and stopped the problem once and for all. There were some long nights and dirty days involved here and that's the side of operating steam you don't hear about that much. It's not all blasting the stack and glory. |
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| Author: | alcoguy1 [ Fri Nov 18, 2011 5:18 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Re: A surprise meeting with Frisco #1522 in 1990 |
This reminds me of back when I was in college. I used to sit in my room, or classroom and listen to steam pulling into town. On fridays and Saturdays especially I would head down to the station and just sit on the platform and watch the trains pull in. My last few years there the railroad was mixing trains with steam and diesel and sometimes just diesel. Luckily I was able to afford a decent camera by this time and got some pretty nice shots of both. I have to say, whether passenger or freight 734 always put on a good show. Hehe.....gotcha:-) |
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