Although it wears a fresh coat of Rock Island’s maroon-and-white, GP40 348 is Union Pacific-owned, running on Union Pacific rails. Westbound here at Muncie, Kansas, just west of Kansas City on March 27, 1967, the train will turn onto Rock's own Sunset Route in 50 miles, at Topeka. The 348 and 39 like it were purchased five months before by the bigger road in anticipation of a merger that will never happen. Some of the units will find their way to UP’s roster with the Rock’s 1980 collapse in final bankruptcy. But by then the 348 will have been been so wrung out, run without maintenance by cash-starved Rock Island, that it will be scrapped.
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.
