Conrail's Chicago line stretched from Selkirk, NY to Chicago, IL and was an extremely important double track main in which the majority of its traffic from the western roads reached the New England states and the East Coast. Included on this route were important terminal cities like Toledo and Cleveland, OH and Conrail's major classification yard in Elkhart, IN. This busy route saw anywhere from 50-60 trains a day including a lot of foreign power from western connections with Union Pacific and Burlington Northern Santa Fe and their predecessors.
You can also view this gallery on an interactive map.
1
BN 5114, ATSF 2917 - a GP35(!), and CR 3366 powers SFEL-8 off the Porter Branch and onto the Chicago line at Porter, IN on November 8, 1997.
2
BN 5514 and fellow BN GE's leads empty coal train UDM-6wc east of Butler, IN on January 21, 1997.
4
CN 5336 is seen leading Conrail C30-7A 6575 and a pair of other blue units past the west end of DeWitt Yard at Minoa, NY
5
CN lease power works an Eastbound by Goodman Street yard. Those wide cabs were a novelty at the time.
6
A leased CNW SD-40 is the trailing unit on this power that is backing into the yard for a pickup.
Early CR had leased power from several sources, including CNW, CN, BAR, & Precision National.
7
An Eastbound heads down track 3 at Goodman Street with a pair of F7A units trailing.
9
A Conrail caboose hop has just departed the Riverbed for Collinwood and is seen here passing through Bridge 1 in downtown Cleveland. 1869, still in Penn Central paint, leads this F7A/F7B/GP9B/F7A/caboose set east. Conrail is only a year old at this date, and the railroad still looks a mess in some places.
10
An SW1500 has 2 cabooses, an ex LV & ex EL, in the cut of cars it is switching.
11
Conrail B23-7 1914 is leading a westbound freight out of the Buffalo Terminal while passengers start to gather on the platform of the Depew Amtrak station
12
.thumbnail.JPG "CR 1933 on TES-501 with OCS-502 in distance")
CR 1933 pulling the test train TES-501 at CP 412 in Goshen, IN is westbound as the eastbound OCS-502 with an Operation Lifesaver special prepares to make the turn and head down the Marion Branch on June 24, 1998. Note that they are using NS' track test cars a year before the merger. Dan McDonough photo with permission
15
An ex EL painted out caboose. It does not fit in the N3A number sequence, but looks like one.
16
A nice mix of eighties style Conrail with B23-7 1991 leading eastbound past the fuel and sand towers at Collinwood, Ohio in June of '83. Has the looks of an ELBU with all those CN cars up front.
18
It's hard to pick the more interesting subject. The old PC fuel truck is just as nice as the RS-32s under the sand tower.
19
An RS-32 and a pair of GP-9B units arrive at Goodman Street Yard with one of the "big" locals. This was probably the train from Kodak. The Kodak train and the salt train were the 2 biggest locals out of Rochester.
20
Power at the Rochester shops this day included a GP-30. Iy was unusual for this model to be used for local power around the area.
22
A westbound with a pair of GP35's and a GP38-2 pass through the QD tower area of Collinwood, Ohio on a nice February 1983 day.
25
2 blue GEs lead 2 black EMDs on a Westbound freight. The 2nd & 3rd cars are freight cars on flat cars.
26
CR 2565 leads Mail-8M past some parked camp cars at Edgerton, OH on October 28, 1998. Chris Howe photo
27
Using the flash attachment on my old Graphlex would get results like this. It threw a lot of light with one bulb.
The results were not top quality, but better than no picture at all of this ex EL U-25-B leading a Westbound.
