Baldwin Road Switchers

In the fall of 2009, my family traveled to Chicago to visit close friends. This was my first visit to Chicagoland by car, so I set aside a day in the schedule to visit the impressive Illinois Railway Museum. For years it was a goal of mine to see their massive collection, but in truth it was two Deep South locomotives on the site that most drew me on a must-see pilgrimage: T.R. Miller Mill's diminutive kettle #101 and, of course, Columbus & Greenville #606. The IRM is a massive museum, covering acres of land, so it took me the better part of the day to find our beloved Baldwin hood unit hidden away in a series of display tracks (see below). It had been 20 years since I last laid eyes on the locomotive -- finding her in 1989 tucked in the weeds of a scrapper's siding in Greenville, Ms -- so I was not certain what to expect at IRM. Streaked in rust, the carbody certainly bears the marks of two decades in the elements. Her cab windows are boarded over, the underbody fuel tank is missing, and the strange gash in the long hood near the generator -- first discovered in Greenville in '89 -- still remains. Otherwise, the old Baldwin is holding her own in retirement up north. Still marked "City of Moorhead," I chuckled at the oddity of this Mississippi machine rusting away on the outskirts of Chicago. Parked next to Burlington Northern F-units and in the shadow of Union Pacific's massive gas turbine set, #606 seems like an odd choice for a midwestern museum. Even so, I'm not complaining. A little eccentricity beats the scrapper's torch any day. (I wonder: Does anyone in Illinois even know about the Yellow Dog diamond?)