One of the places I visited while on my last midwestern trek was the bit of rail where the 0-8-0’s from Northwestern Steel and Wire have been seemingly left to be reclaimed by Mother Nature as she sees fit.
You may recall that NSW was the very last place running steam in regular working service, til about 1980-1981 (a fact that always frustrated me, since I was born in 1980…I lived in their era, but never got to experience them running).
On previous visits, the units always looked about like so:
However, much to my surprise, on this visit, the first locomotive looked like this:
Some of the work seemed fairly in depth, but it some places it seemed not quite so much (like the quick and dirty paint job over the boiler lagging, rust and all). The bricks from the brick arch in the firebox were neatly stacked like so:
And most curiously, “Ken Marks” was spray painted on a con rod, as such:
Does anybody know the fate of this unit, and possibly her sister? I think there may have once been a 3rd unit here, too. I’m thinking that it may have gone to Amboy, IL, and is the unit on display there. Also, I’m curious if anybody knows who Ken Marks is.
Thanks in advance for any help!