Pete,

I'm not sure that is a fair read of the situation. Yes, Herb was the chairman, IIRC, of the Northwest Suburban Mass Transit District, which was responsible for acquiring new locomotives for the Milwaukee Road suburban service prior to the formation of the RTA, but that was a product of the early seventies. The E-5 was already on the property in February of 1970 when I first became active, which I suspect predates the formation of the transit district by a year or two. To give Herb his due, at the time his enthusiasm could be pretty infectious, and I would imagine that the fact that he had already managed to acquire the entire Zephyr trainset for IRM let EMD know the seriousness of his intentions.

Anyone know of photos of the trade-in's being stored or cut down?

A web search for 'Pielet Bros Scrapping' brought up this one. I'm surprised to see RI F-units being cut up as they were still using quite a few in '76. Maybe they were trade-ins toward the new GP38-2's?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/high_iron/2679273387/

Yes, it's very difficult to find photos of other locomotives being fed to Pielet or PECO. How about other massive scrapyard turn-ins?

David:
Commonwealth Edison 0-6-0 No. 7 was at the scrap yard, but at the far, far end away from the actual cutting area. It sat at the end of the track closest to the IHB (?) main.
J.David
PS:
Another thing that was saved from Pielet are the tender trucks now under IRM's Milwaukee Road 4-8-4 No. 265. When we got the 265 we were surprised to find that the tender trucks had wooden bearings (and rust axles). I happened to see another Milwaukee S-3 tender (from 269) at Pielet (last used for fuel storage out west). Honest Nick made a deal with Pielet for the trucks (don't ask for the details). After we had moved 265 from the park onto live rail, we did a truck swap.
JDC

Yes they were Baldwins. BS15ms #'s 6002,6003 or 6005 and BS16ms #'s 6007,6009,6011,6012,6014 and 6015 are all listed as traded on assorted dates.

I'll bet a lot of fans would rather have webcams recording movements into these several major scrap yards than recording traffic on mainline hotspots!

BTW, the article in February 2012 TRAINS about Larry's says that the owners don't like LTE being referred to as a scrapper. They like to think of it as a place locomotives are reborn. While that's certainly true in many cases, I wonder how many locomotives many vs. how many exit as operational units. One would need to know that before deciding whether the term scrapper fits.

Steve

Pielet Bros. strongly discouraged photography of their operation. They had an elevated guard tower at their entrance off of Joliet Road to restrict access to the property. I stopped one day, parking far away from their property, and walked up Joliet Road (there is an embankment there taking the roadway over the IHB tracks on a bridge) and pointed my camera towards some dead units visible from the road. I was promptly advised over a loud speaker system from the tower that photography was not allowed, not even from a public road. Sufficiently intimidated, I walked back to my car and left the area never to attempt photography there again. Looking back now I wonder what would have happened if I had stayed and shot a few frames.

Don C.

The village police regularly stopped to try to chase away people who were taking pictures of Pielet Brothers scrapyard from the road. A bunch of us stopped there one day on the way back from lunch and the police arrived in a few moments.

PC

Unless it was a military or government security operation, I don't really think much could have been done to stop your taking pictures from a public vantage point. If there was a tacit agreement from a major employer in the community with the local police, you could have been tied up in legal paper work, red tape, mumbo-jumbo, whatever. The 60's and 70's were times of major civil unrest, so I think we would all have been intimidated. Who could blame you? Of course, I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on t.v.

Doing a Flickr search brings up a few more shots.

http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=P ... ros&m=text

There were at least some pix taken of scrapping operations there. There used to be a series of pix of the actual cutting operations of the Soo Line 800's (U-33C's, IIRC) including shots of hoisting the hood sections away, sand pouring from the severed sand pipes, posted on the SooLineHistory Yahoo list web page, but it was back when storage capacity was limited, and as the space filled up, the images were deleted. I have no recall of who posted them.

On pages 55-56 of the book, "Trackside with Mr. ALCO-George Hockaday" there several photos of both scrapping and storage of ALCO's including the Reading FA-1's.

Sounds like a mass photography session (with lawyer in tow) ought to be organized.

Steve

Wow! A railfan protest movement, complete with interlocked arms, iPhones, and protest songs! I don't think Pielet even exists anymore, having been sold at least once. Does this scrapyard still exist? Did it become part of Precision National?