I don't know if it was very common in the States, but in England during the heyday of the railways young boys would walk or bicycle down to the nearest line or station and try and "nab" locomotives, which once spotted would be written down and/or crossed off their list. They hoped to see all of the engines of a specific region, or of a class of engine, or perhaps one of each type. To me, this trip represented the same sort of adventure. I didn't take any pictures of Conrail trains, so either we didn't see any or I decided to save my precious film to use elsewhere.
Now, from what I can remember the only thing in Dubuque is a Bible College and we knew many people that attended. What exactly I would do when we got there wasn't known. It certainly wasn't a trip to Walley World! But, having grown up in western New York State and rarely having the chance to get out and see the country, it sounded fun. From Rochester to Dubuque was a distance of about 800 miles and perhaps 13 hours of straight driving. I don't think we did it in one day, but I don't really remember the "non-pertinent" details. I recall we drove through Chicago, my first and only time in the Windy City (and named because of its smell similar to onions, if you believe the legend).
I also remember it being a bit hot, and dusty, and I tried to play a game where I checked off all of the license plates from different states I could find. I didn't get all 50, but I am sure I got close (I think I assumed Hawaii didn't count). I don't remember my siblings going, though I can't recall why, so I had the back of the minivan all to myself. I did bring along one issue of Railroad Model Craftsman magazine to read, the October 1997 one with a cover story by Dominic Bourgeois on weathering D&H diesels... it is pretty ironic now if you ask me! However, I didn't care about that as at the time as I was only interested in the Burlington Northern and Conrail.
I remember getting to the midwest and seeing a wide diversity of engines that I had only seen in the magazines. Naturally, every BN engine I came across that I could I snapped a picture of but there were some other oddities that I remembered reading about in Trains, such as the Illinois Central's "Paducah rebuilds". The iconic orange and white engines with the roof-mounted paper filters that hung over the sides looked really strange to me then, so I guess I must have managed to plead with my parents to pull over long enough to get this picture. I also got a couple of the black and white engines too.
In 1996, the BN had officially acquired and merged with the Santa Fe railroad but the repaints had not begun in earnest yet. So, when we stumbled onto this odd cabless B-unit I had to get a picture of it. Remember, at the time film cameras held 24 pictures and I might have been lucky and had two cameras total for the trip, so at most I would have been able to take 48 shots. The train had to be really rare or special for me to devote a negative slot to it, and this engine was one of them. Looking it up online just now, I see it was an EMD SD45-2B. Not a common engine at all.
My father did take me railfanning one morning, and we went to two different places. I don't recall where they were, and we didn't stay too long in either- likely under an hour at each- but they were a treasure trove of special trains. This photograph features Denver and Rio Grand Western and Union Pacific engines, which never made it into Rochester. In 1996, the UP had acquired the D&RGW and some engines were repainted by not all of them. Being only a year later, this one survived long enough to get caught by me. We caught it pulling a train through a rail crossing, and I bet the shot of the UP engine was too blurry to scan.
I should point out that many of the railroads above don't exist anymore in either their corporate identity, or their paint schemes. They are "Fallen Flags." The green and black, and awesome corporate ivory and dark green colors of the BN are gone. So are the blue and yellow of the Santa Fe, and the black and orange of the D&RGW. A year after taking these pictures, CN acquired the IC/ICG Railroad in 1998 so the orange and white engines vanished. And, of course, so did the Southen Pacific, which was the trailing unit behind the two others shown above. And it's a "tunnel motor" too! It looks like it lived a tough life.
After visiting Dubuque, on the way home we drove north through Wisconsin and perhaps detoured into another state before entering Canada. I recall we hit a small rail yard with various Wisconsin & Southern locomotives stored. I don't think I had even heard of the W&S at the time, and so it was definitely a place that we had to stop and get a couple of pictures of. There were a few Geeps and some passenger cars, but something that was new to me was an E-unit. This is engine #101, which makes it an E9A. I don't recall ever seeing an E-unit prior to that time, and it just seemed so long.
I also got this shot at the right. In the picture they just appear to be a bunch of old engines, in a couple of different paint schemes. But, if you look way down the line you will see a bluish engine that had some weird angles on the rear sides. Either it is a GG-1, which seems extremely unlikely, or else it is a BL2. I assumed it was a BL2 when I took the picture and I zoomed in as best I could, as I couldn't walk down the tracks for a better view. Of all the engines I saw on this trip, the BL2 it is probably the rarest (ironically, though, I just went railfanning two weeks ago to shoot a pair of them less than an hour from my house.) I see there is an Illinois Central E9B in the attractive brown and orange scheme.
We also saw some South Shore Line trains, which were strange because I didn't see an engine pushing or pulling them. I also have two other non-railroad memories: I remember we stopped in Notre Dame, Indiana while passing through the state (GO COLTS!) and we wanted to find a hotel and a place to eat. Apparently, it was Freshman move in weekend or something similar at the Notre Dame University campus and all hotels were booked solid so we couldn't stay there. But, we did eat at a steak house that was very dark with lots of old wood trim and giant steak knives. That was cool. And, when passing through Wisconsin we stopped at a cheese tourist trap (I think it was a castle) and I got one of their catalogs showing all the prepared baskets of cheese and crackers and such to read for the return trip home. I like to read those things even today.
Looking back on the trip and these pictures, I had forgotten the huge diversity of railroads that existed at the time even if they were just legacy locomotives waiting to be repainted. Usually, I only saw Conrail engines with a few CSX mixed in for good measure, and maybe an occasional western road power run through. But rarely. Here, there are at least eight railroads and eleven paint schemes represented in the pictures. Not bad for a seven day haul. And most will never be seen again, except perhaps at a museum. It was an awesome railroad adventure.
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