Sorry I did not get back to you sooner but Stockton is having its annnual Asparagus Festival. This is the 23rd annual and it may be the last. Farmers are saying they can grow corn for ethanol and make three times the money.
My memory is pretty vague on the details but didn’t the Pioneer Zephyr trainset operate as the Silver Streak Zephyr on the KC - Lincoln run at one time? Perhaps before being retired its route was cut back to either KC - Omaha or Omaha - Lincoln. I’ll take a WAG and say that Omaha was its maintenance base.
Right it did serve as the Silver Streqk Zephyr at one time but its final run was an obscure St. Joseph Omaha Lincoln round trip daily and its maintenace base was St. Joseph. I believe this run was operated prior to the Pioneer Zephyr by a Doodlebug with a trailing coach. Often times the trailing coach was the CB&Q Silver Pendulum. My uncle knew a couple of the St. Joe maintenance guys at that time and they cussed the day it was ever built as everything was custom on the Pioneer Zephyr and the power was the forerunner of the 567. My Uncle was a Machinist with his own shop in St. Joe and that is how he meant the two machinists from the CB&Q, if it required anything more than what a basic machine shop could do they brought it to him to duplicate. Of course nothing from a 567 would fit or work so everything was hand machined to work. I personally can remember many times during that period shortly before retirement that some diesel would be towing the Pioneer Zephyr back from its daily run as it had broken down somewhere in route.
I’m drawing a blank when it comes to remembering specifically what your mention of “the 567” refers to. I’m guessing the 567 was the number of one of the Burlington’s second generation shovel nosed Zephyr engines. If so, weren’t these non-articulated and didn’t the Q have more than one of them? I vaguely remember seeing pictures of them heading (IIRC) the General Pershing and the Mark Twain Zephyrs but it’s been a long time ago and I could easily be mistaken.
He’s referring to EMC/EMD’s basic series of diesel engines (so named for 567 cubic inches displacement per cylinder), used from the late 1930s to the mid-1960s. The original Zephyr was powered, I believe, by a Winton distillate engine (somebody will correct me if that’s wrong!), but the point is, it was not exactly easy to fix in the era when everything else the Q operated (practically) was powered by EMD 567-series engines.
Sorry for the delay once again in getting back to you. Actually I was referring to the diesel engine it was the forerunner of the EMD 567 in the Pioneer Zephyr and everything about the beast was a one of a kind. It certainly made some money for my Uncle with all of the custom machining he had to do for it. But by that time the Pioneer Zephyr had a lot of miles under its streamlined exterior and I guess it can be forgiven for its old age problems.