Interesting Rail Road exhibits and rides

[Jhanecker2]

The Illinois Railroad Museum  in  Union , Illinois  has a number of steam ,diesel & electric locomotives plus passenger & freight cars it is about 65 miles northwest of Chicago. Also the Museum of Science & Industry  has  Railroad Equipment on exhibit  and a newly renovated  Model Train Layout , the new one is I Believe in HO Scale. Just heard Mayor Daley is promoting the development of a new high speed rail line from Downtown to O'Hare Airport .  John II.

[ilovenxstage]

My most memorable train experience was about 10 years ago when I was a member of the Indiana Transportation museum. At the end of the summer season we had a "members only" trip the full length of our line, plus some of the Indiana Railroad shortline. We were to have two streamlined passenger coaches, a caboose, and a loco at each end. But one of our locos, an ex-MILW F7 broke a leaf spring, so we were coupled on to the tail end of an IRR freight pulled by three SD-18s, and we were pulled backward (caboose, two coaches, and our FP-7 at the very end) to the end of the line, then our FP-7 pulled us back. The entire return leg of the trip (which lasted a total of about 5 hours), I stood on the rear platform of the caboose and got an awesome view of northern Indiana, including some street trackage in downtown Noblesville. Ah, good times!