NWI CHAPTER
PRESIDENT’S REPORT
August 2024 from
Jerry Pyfer

The August 24, 2024 NWI Chapter meeting will take place once again at the Oregon, Illinois train depot.

The depot will be open for us by 3pm.
Plus, Mike Abernethy owner of the Silver View CB&Q observation/dome car will be on hand to open the car for your inspection between 4pm and 5pm. Mike will also tell us all about his car at 6:30pm after dinner.
You are on your own for dinner. Grills will be available with the fire up at 5pm. Some of us have ordered pizzas from down the road but the order must be placed by 4pm.

Following dinner, the meeting starts at 7pm, then the slide show presented by you. Bring up to 20 slides of your choice. We will have both digital and film slide projectors. The digital slides go first on account they are brighter in the weakening daylight. The film slides will follow as it gets darker. I do not plan to bring any sound system.
We usually tie up by 9:30-10:00pm.

August has five Saturdays, so make sure you make plans for the 24th, the fourth Saturday.

NWI Chapter’s 55th Anniversary

Plans have already begun for the NWI Chapter’s 55th anniversary celebration at the November Annual Meeting.
My train of through is leading to exhibiting this chapter’s railfan photography and programming skills during the November meeting program.

If you have a 15-minute digital multi-media program and an NWI chapter member or subscriber to this newsletter, please contact me. We have room for three programs.

Whose consist could this be?
What began as space filler on the back page has become an on-going little trivia test. I will include a locomotive consist line drawing depicting a locomotive consist of a certain railroad. You have to detect whose consist it was. A locomotive or two will be the deciding clue.
July’s consist is a bit of a trick question. The locomotives are EMD GP35s, both featuring air reservoirs on the roof of the long hood, which is why I placed both units on one consist. The air reservoir placement allowed for more room for fuel giving the units longer mileage between fill-ups. The rooftop air tanks would earn the nickname, “torpedo tubes”.
But each locomotive is unique to one railroad each. The Frisco GP35 had the dynamic brakes. Actually, the Frisco bought the GP35 with and without roof-top air tanks. The Chicago & North Western GP35s did not have dynamic brakes. You can give yourself two points per unit. You may not have a point for saying the BN on account of the merger, as the BN did not have the non-dynamic brake torpedo-tube units.

Railfanning is…

Railfanning is having the Illinois Railway Museum webcam open on the diesel shop live stream with their BN GE U30-C #5383 idling away in the summer sun, as I am writing NWL newsletter articles

For more information about the Chapter, see Meetings and Join.