I had Labor Day off so I decided to head south again and catch the latest consist on the Union Pacific Overland Route. Today the UP 1982 and UP 1988 the Rock Island and M-K-T Heritage Units are heading westbound to Des Moines, Iowa. So I headed towards Illinois to catch them. I got lucky and only had to wait about 1/2 hour before the made their appearance. Below are some photos of the duo. Unfortunately the weather wasn’t that great, but the rain and severe storms held off until after I had gotten my pictures. Then all hell broke loose. I drove through torrential rain and Tornado Warnings through Rockford. People were stopped on the freeway under bridges in traffic.
Westbound at Howard Road just west of Elburn, IL 09/04/2006
Westbound east of Rochelle and I-39 overpass
Stopped just west of the I-39 bridge and still east of Rochelle, IL
The Burlington Junction Railway does some work on the east side of Rochelle near the BNSF yard as storm clouds roll into Rochelle.
The engine may say Burlington Junction, but that’s not the name of the switching line at Rochelle. As far as I know, it’s just trackage owned by the City of Rochelle–shows up as “CIR” on our interchange documents.
The engine is a fairly recent development–a Trackmobile is all that they’d used for years. Don’t know whether it was begged, borrowed, or bought.
That storm front still looked impressive when it was coming toward us later in the afternoon–but it kind of fizzled, at least as far as we were concerned.
Thanks for the nice comments about the photos. I was surprised to see Miss Katy running through Illinois. I wish the weather had been a little bit better, but all in all it wasn’t bad. We need the George W. Bush Air Force One #4141 to come up and visit us up north, haven’t seen that one yet.
According to the trace UP 1988/1982 arrived in Des Moines at the early time of 4:46am. They don’t show an anticpated departure destination yet.
We caught the new power for Rochelle – a freshly rebuilt and repainted Burlington Junction SW1200 – on its way through Eola two nights ago. It was explained that BJ had sent its 1609 up there a while back, and the 900 (the SW1200) was going to replace it, but we haven’t gotten an explanation as to the BJ’s connection with Rochelle. Here’s the thread, with a Burlington Junction thumbnail & photos:
hey thanks for the pics.always got to watch the weather.drove through my share of storms myself. I am always asking Carl when is Up going to let csx borrow some heritage units?keith email me I got some milwaukee coaches you might want to see.
So, let’s see if we can find out something about a change in operations–there may be something to that possibility, if the engine was deliberately relettered for the Burlington Junction and sent to Rochelle.
It bodes well if they outgrew that Trackmobile–when the ethanol plant comes on line they may wish they’d kept the Geep!
(I found out about the original BJRY when they had a fleet of Center-Beam flat cars–since relettered.)
No, you’re not. I live six miles from the UP transcon, but had two strikes against me- they came through in the middle of the night, and even if they hadn’t, I had to work.
Well the Heritage duo UP 1988/1982 is still together. They arrived into Proviso this morning 9/06 at about 10am. Of course this time the UP 1982 was in the lead. I don’t know what the plans are for them now, it doesn’t show a new destination on the trace. Also the UP 2002/3300/2001 trio was a couple of trains behind them. The trace also shows the UP 1995 (CNW) now in Tama, Iowa. Busy place to be.
Well, so much for seeing 1995 this weekend! Hopefully the other pair will be catchable… Wouldn’t mind seeing the genset unit either, I’m guessing it’s an NRE unit?
I have pics from Rochelle from some years ago when there was a Rochelle Railroad or Railway that switched the spur leading from the UP. They used a GP and had parked a caboose as a yard office. That did not last long. I seem to recall Pioneer RR was running it for them. All I have seen for some years is the Trackmobile, which sometimes struggles to move the cuts of cars it is expected to move.
I remember the Pioneer Geep and the old NS caboose, too. It was in fact called the Rochelle Railroad at that time.
It’s still showing up as “CIR” on my lists, as of today. The owner of that reporting mark is City of Rochelle.
As for exotic power, we sent the Blues Brothers (2001/3300/2002) out on MPRCB again today. I forgot to check where UPY 2314 wound up. We also had a visit from “the locomotive formerly known as CNW 8575” yesterday. I can’t remember its UP number, but the 8575 is still prominently on the long hood.
