My Dad’s friend David Hardie, seems to have made several duplicates and shared with him over the years. I usually don’t scan those and share since I don’t own the content, but I scanned this one in my assembly line and it’s worth a share.
There is a lot happening – and not happening here – here if you zoom in a bit.
I did what I could to enhance with GIMP. Ecktachrome
What I notice most is the LACK of graffiti on every darn thing and the abundance of weeds too.
In the lower image – great for the model maker – you can see a damaged end of a tank car, a few steam tenders and a steam crane too ( really zoom in basically dead center of the lower ).
“Strange”, I thought when I saw this marking, “wonder who ben was”.
DUH
Bensenville, Illinois.
Interesting study done here : http://industrialscenery.blogspot.com/2016/05/milwaukees-bensenville-yard.html
1981 was a 9 weeks on the road year like 1978 was. Leave in June when school ended and return in September when just before school started.
It’s kinda funny that just yesterday my oldest friend and I were discussing my strange memory and then I came across this box of Milwaukee Road images.
I seem to have the ability to recall in great detail places I visited once or twice while on the road and I still ” see ” my hometown as it was in the 70s… drive’s my wife nuts when we are there and I call out lunch at Arthur’s liquors ( its been a Mexican place since about 1980 ) .
See I can recall precisely the place this was taken, the heat and even a bit of the discussion Dad and I had about the “domes that contained palm trees”.
This terrarium seemed odd since we have three palms in the yard at home. “…think winter… ” was his reply. Oh, yeah.
I did check Google for confirmation – that the spot was the same.
<a href="http://<iframe src="https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m18!1m12!1m3!1d9980.62587251174!2d-87.95331002126237!3d43.02643650000001!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!3m3!1m2!1s0x88051a3b9067b207%3A0xacf13ad0984f6ec4!2sMitchell%20Park%20Horticultural%20Conservatory!5e1!3m2!1sen!2sus!4v1602546616103!5m2!1sen!2sus" width="600" height="450" frameborder="0" style="border:0;" allowfullscreen="" aria-hidden="false" tabindex="0">Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory
Lucky for me the ball park and arboretum are still there.
Also It realize its called Butler Yard and it has changed a lot… really most of it is gone now. I do like the high views tho..
The Milwaukee was one of Dad’s favorite roads to photograph.
He ( and later we ) would find and photograph the Milwaukee Road in our northern states summer trips.
This is from July 1973, Dad was working in the Portland office of his company and that meant weekends on the Milwaukee & SP&S instead of coming back to the SF Bay Area every weekend.
Here we have a tired slide that was shot on the dark side and has age spots – like me !
It looks a bit like a H.O. Model on my PC Screen.
Summer grass punctuated by a miniature monolith. Abandoned grey aged plank church, cows in distant, poles, wires and a pallet under the wire and along the old style concrete road way posts.
I really like it.
So lets see, 2019 – 1975 = 44 years !
Well I tried to get this lined up but Google Man will not walk down the track.
Still it makes sense to try the Before/After Slider Thing but you can see the spot here better on your own.
Maybe Google Man doesn’t want to crew with the track group spotted here in 2019.
MILW 5800 is a U36C according to the RR Archives and was scrapped in 1985
So let’s see 2019 – 1985 = 34 years !
Dad loved Washington and Oregon and the Milwaukee was there with his beloved SP&S.
This is August of 1973 and was probably a weekend between weeks that he had while working out of the Portland office.
See way before work at home and the internet, you actually had to leave your family behind and go to a different city to work when “Voluen-Told” to do so. Also that was how you proved your self & ascended in a company. Yep days gone by for sure.
Based on the RR Archive, this would have been five years into the upgrade from U28 to U30B.
I think that the Milwaukee is pretty special as well with their variety of equipment and their rural lines through the wilds of the high plains, into the northern midwest to the Lake Michigan. Some of my best childhood travels were along these lines and they are still discussed today on a Reddit thread occasionally..
Anyway here is to the simpler times and Kodachrome memories.
Yeah I have shared before but “simpler times” came up in a thing I was listening to today…and Milwaukee electrics also came up on a thing I was reading.
Yeah simpler times indeed
Fred's Slides 