Unmistakably Alco
The image was made on a humid day about five miles south-east of Charleston, Illinois. We're standing along one of the several routes owned by the Indiana Hi-Rail Corporation—this particular line was once the Nickel Plate Road.
Number 332, working for the Indiana Hi-Rail Corporation, is an Alco C420. Discerning the lineage of this locomotive was interesting: to begin with, the gray color made me think of the Louisville & Nashville.
Indeed the engine ran for the L&N as number 1332. [It seems that IHRC simply removed the “1” to create a new number: 332.] But the story goes on: the bell on the nose is a tip-off that this locomotive once labored for the Monon (subsumed into the L&N in 1971). The Alco C420 was purchased new for the Hoosier Line in August of 1967 and worked with the number of 515.
One image by Richard Koenig; taken in August of 1990.
