Bandits After a bankruptcy and long wait for a savior through merger, Milwaukee Road’s physical plant was not the best. This included the weathered paint on its locomotives. New owner Soo Line methodically began “patching” and renumbering the Milwaukee units into its roster, coming up with an unattractive blackwash over parts of the locomotives to completely cover any of the Milwaukee Road’s identity.
The scheme, if you can call it that, were eventually nicknamed “Bandits”. I photographed them, even though I didn’t care for the look. Other fellow photographers said I’d be glad I photographed them when they were all long gone years later. Well, that might be true, but I still don’t like Bandits, even though I have hundreds of photos of them that would seem to prove otherwise. Nonetheless, I’d rather see them in gnarled Milwaukee Road paint.
On Wisconsin Central’s first day of operations, a pair of Bandits sit near the locomotive facility in Shops Yard at North Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, with Soo Line SD40-2 Nos. 6365 and 6304 showing off their alluring (not) bandit colors on the afternoon of October 11, 1987.
Flashing forward to today—which would I rather photograph, a Bandit or a BNSF Gevo? Hmmmm… How about you?
