This was the engine of my youth, CB&Q’s handsome O-5 Class Northern, which I watched from my grandmother’s backyard in Denver’s Globeville section. And just about the time I thought I would never see one again in steam, here on June 9, 1959, the 5626 simmers at the south end of Denver Union Station, waiting to take a trainload of Illini Railroad Club enthusiasts down to Colorado Springs and back. It will be the high point of a now legendary trip for which the Q has provided two of its 4-8-4s to relay fans from Chicago to Lincoln (the 5632), to Denver (5626) and back. But the trip will end badly for the 5626. Just out of Denver on the return leg, she will break an eccentric, will be hauled east and, a year later, go to scrap.Otherwise, she might have become one of four CB&Q 4-8-4s to be saved.
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.
