#seaboardcoastline

[railwayhistorical]

The First Bicentennial Unit

I believe Seaboard Coast Line 1776 was the first diesel locomotive to be adorned with the nation's bicentennial in mind. The unit is a General Electric U36B built in June of 1971.

I was traveling with some rail enthusiasts through Evansville, Indiana, when we just happened upon it, if memory serves after 50 years.

In these images, the locomotive is first seen moving eastward on Division Street. As it turned off that intriguing section, it paused for whatever reason—perhaps for the benefit of a car load of rail buffs chasing it (see third photograph).

Recently I did some poking around via various Facebook groups and learned that the man running the locomotive is Mr. Troy Lee King, Road Foreman of Engines. I believe he worked for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad upon which the locomotive is seen running.

In any case, the engine continued running northward, now on the former Chicago & Eastern Illinois—this portion of which was folded into the L&N in 1970. We were able to catch up with it again at Wansford Yard north of Evansville where the remainder of the images were made (again, confirmed by employees of the railroad via FB).

I imagine there will be several articles next year that will highlight all the bicentennial locomotives that ran around back in 1976 as nearly every railroad felt it was good practice at the time.

Seven images by Richard Koenig; taken March 28th 1976.

[railwayhistorical]

An Alco Night

Here are a couple of Alco RS units on the Louisville & Nashville in Bloomington, Indiana (former Monon). I can’t be for certain, but I believe these are sitting in McDoel Yard there.

Someone on FB tells me the L&N was power starved at this time and the parent company, SCL, leased them a batch of Alcos. Both of these, 1250 and 1258, are RS3s built in 1951.

Image by Richard Koenig; taken April 5th 1978.

[railwayhistorical]

The Original Auto-Train

This private company operated trains to Florida from 1971 to 1981. While forced to cease its services, the business model lives on in an Amtrak train with a similar name. Here we see a few images made at the northern terminus of their second route, which ran from Louisville southward (on the L&N) to the sunshine state.

The equipment of this railroad is interesting: they acquired and utilized a large batch of full-length dome cars from the Santa Fe, the road locomotives were new General Electric U36Bs with Blomberg trucks (to satisfy the SCL of their main route on the east coast), and in at least one case they converted a heavyweight baggage car to serve as a steam generation car.

While most of the big domes were eventually preserved, the one pictured above was involved in a wreck and later scrapped. The action shots come from Farmer's Lane south of Louisville.

Five images by Richard Koenig; taken April 3rd 1976.