| Chicago Burlington & Quincy Railroad E7 9929A eastbound at Naperville, Illinois on December 1, 1963, photograph by Chuck Zeiler. This E7 was built in September 1947 (c/n 4439) on EMD Order E792A, and was traded as credit to GE for a U28B in February 1968. It is pictured on the eastbound Train #2, the Galesburg Local, which made all the station stops between Galesburg and Aurora, the ones the Zephyrs skipped. On this day, the Galesburg Local has three heavyweight coaches and a former troop kitchen car from World War II converted to a storage mail car. I could have framed this photo better, and come up with a much better photo of the train, but in cleaning the scan, I noticed a face in the house on the far left. Although this is winter, the window is open in the upper story of the house, and there is a face staring at me as I take this photo. That is my mother, and she is watching over her 15 year old son as he carelessly wanders onto railroad property and photographs this scene. Most of our mothers don't get to see what we do to get these photos, and I'm sure she's wondering what this is all about. She had the same question that most professional railroaders asked me; 'What are you going to do with all of these train photos?' I never could explain it at the time, and I doubt they would have bought into the story that I was waiting until the Internet was invented and I could plunk my photos into a place where anyone could look at them and read this story. Actually, I had no idea why I was taking all these train photos. |