This beauty started life 50 years ago this month, January 1965, as GM&O 631 looking a lot better than she does now, but in the same paint scheme. Builder number 29752, frame number 7764-7. She still rides on ALCO trucks, as delivered, from a traded in FA cab unit. This unit passed to the ICG at the time of them merger, eventually becoming ICG 2529. It was sold to Paducah & Louisville, and lived there a few years as PAL 2529. It was sold to a museum in Mobile, AL and repainted into the colors you see here in 1997. I suppose it doesn't look bad for its age, but almost 2 decades out in the elements in the Deep South can take its toll.
Ed Bowers now owns the engine, and it sports VLIX reporting marks. It was stored for several years at Oak Ridge, TN, but is now en route to Mike Roberts' Railway Service Contractors in Kansas City for overhaul and return to service, and most visibly, a new coat of GM&O paint.
Here she is sitting on the diesel lead in UP Neff Yard, a former Mo-Pac facility. What's 50 feet behind me? The UP Sheep Jump Flyover. What do you care? It sits on top of the former GM&O alignment into Kansas City, so this thing spent a little bit of time on home rails getting into the yard. It was interchanged from the NS a few days before at UP 18th Street Yard on NS Train 33J.
The Cargill engine is Ex-MP 3285, and was built in May 1979, builders number 786178-20, frame number 786178-20, and IS on home rails.
Not
just heritage schemes, not just commemorative schemes - this album is devoted to some of the world's most interesting paint schemes, past or present.
