By now, it's no secret that Chicago's commuter railroad, Metra, has a fleet of specially painted locomotives. It started a few years ago with METX 100, which wore a wrap honoring Chicago's Regional Transportation Authority for a few months. Soon thereafter, METX 425, wearing a permanent commemorative paint scheme honoring the Rock Island Railroad, was rolled out of the paint booth. Since then, numerous other locomotives wearing numerous commemorative paint schemes have been introduced to Metra's fleet, including the one pictured here: METX 90, wearing the Chicago and North Western Railway's classic green and yellow.
This locomotive is right at home on Metra's Union Pacific North Line, which arguably retains more history from its prime than any of Metra's other lines. Nearly every depot along the line is virtually unchanged from their C&NW days, making for an incredible amount of historical photo ops. The station pictured here, Winnetka, was overhauled in recent years, but it does include something that is indicative of the olden days on this former-C&NW line: grade separation. Prompted by rampant motor vehicle accidents at railroad crossings, the separation, consisting of the construction of a multi-mile-long trench through the town of Winnetka, was completed in the 1940s. To this day, Winnetka, and the nearby Hubbard Woods station, remain some of the only stations in the Chicago area that exhibit this unique grade separation.
This wasn't 90's first trip on the UP-N, but it was definitely the first time it was well-documented. Hopefully it's the first of many!
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.
A continuously growing album of photos that IMHO reveal the awesome and seldom-seen beauty of the railroad world from the dimming of day to dawn's early light! From dusk to dawn, trains roll on! (I'm still finding gems of sunset-to-sunrise surprises!)
