A pair of SD9’s idle away a Sunday afternoon at Burlington’s Sterling, Colorado, engine house. The CB&Q bought 80 SD9’s, more than any other road except SP, and they are the mainstay of local freights all over the high plains of Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming. Sterling in 1967 is a busy junction for the Q: Monday morning will see the 363 and 338 set out on the line north to Alliance or south to Brush and the junction with the Chicago-Denver mainline, or perhaps east to Holdrege, Nebraska. The side-door waycar on the adjoining track, 14151, is assigned to the Sterling to Cheyenne line, where, trailing a pair of SW’s, it will serve until retired and scrapped in 1976. And some 50 years later, Sterling will still be a busy place, a crew-change point on BNSF’s “coal corridor” from the Powder River Basin to the Joint Line south from Denver.
Not
just heritage schemes, not just commemorative schemes - this album is devoted to some of the world's most interesting paint schemes, past or present.
