CHICAGO — Private cars visiting Chicago as part of the American Association of Private Railroad Car Owners’ annual convention made another journey on local transit lines on Sunday, Sept. 4, traveling a route including Metra and South Shore lines.
As was the case on Saturday —when the private cars visited Metra’s Milwaukee West, Milwaukee North, Rock Island District, and Heritage Corridor routes — power on the Metra portion of Sunday’s trip was provided by the Metra F40PH-3 in a paint scheme honoring the city of Chicago, and a former Amtrak F59PHI in a Chicago & North Western heritage scheme. The eight-car train originated at LaSalle Street station and traveled to Blue Island, Ill., on the Rock Island District, where it made a rare backup move onto the Metra Electric’s Blue Island branch. It backed from there to Kensington yard on the former Illinois Central lakefront line, then made a round trip on the South Shore via Michigan City, Ind., to Dillon, Ind., at the end of a former Nickel Plate Road branch line, before returning to LaSalle Street via Kensington and Blue Island. Two Chicago South Shore and South Bend freight locomotives provided power on the South Shore segment.
The open-platform observation lounge sleeper Montana leading the backup move at Blue Island was built in the Milwaukee Road’s shops for its Olympian Hiawatha in 1947 and converted to a business car in 1955. The other cars on Sunday’s train are the observation Caritas; roomette-bedroom sleeper Cimarron River, former Seaboard Sun Lounge Hollywood Beach; open-platform heavyweight business cars NYC No. 3 and Chapel Hill; and dome-lounge sleeping cars Menzies Vista and Northern Sky.
AAPRCO will be staging a “car party” at La Salle Street today (Monday, Sept. 5), then will make a round-trip run on the Union Pacific’s freight-only Rockford Branch to Belvedere, Ill., with a stop at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Ill., on Tuesday, Sept. 6.
When I win the lottery. 🙂