Friday, March 18, 2016

CC&P: Chicago Central and Pacific Overview

Photo from Wikipedia Commons
In the 1980s, ICG sold ICwest along with most of the other segments of ICG that were not on the mainline. ICwest was sold as the CC&P and operations commenced on December 24, 1985. In 1996, IC realized they made a mistake and bought it back. (IlliniRail) It is now the Iowa Zone of CN's Southern Region. (Wikipedia)

I like that their locomotive livery paid homage to the "green diamond" logo of the IC.

John David Larson posted
Chicago Central looking good in fresh paint as seen at Hayford in 1992.

John David posted
This railroad had a short life - it began in 1985 and lasted until 1999 when it was purchased by a larger company. It was also very much an "Iowa railroad" despite the Chicago Central lettering seen here. It was headquartered in Waterloo and operated the Iowa and Illinois routes of the former Illinois Central Railroad - passing through places like Dubuque, Fort Dodge, and Denison.
Much of the locomotive fleet was a ragtag group of battered, old, weathered second-hand units - but a few were repainted into this very nice looking bright red livery. This particular one appears to have been painted just before I caught it in far south Chicago in the the year 1992.
John Tobin: They had four to six units on some trains, just to be sure they had spares to get to where they were going.....glad they kept the rails shiny.
Edward Moran: John Tobin I think the biggest consist I saw was 11 units on a wb. Eastbound loaded coal and grain trains needed a lot of power, so the CCP would put the excess power on wb’s.
[There are several photos of the older paint jobs on the line in the comments.]
Update:
Steven J. Brown shared
Miscellaneous ratty GeeP rebuilds on the Chicago Central and Pacific at Hawthorne Yard in Cicero, Illinois - February 10, 1991.Lisa Renee Ragsdale 1st 2 are Milwaukee Road GP20's --home built from early GP9's.
John DeWit Woodlock II posted
CCP 973,971 @ Brighton Park-Chicago,IL 24 JAN 95.
[This was taken during the window after ICG sold the Chicago to Freeport route to Chicago Central & Pacific and before IC bought it back.]

John David Larson posted
Hayford Crossing as seen in 1992 with a meeting of geeps - the Chicago Central units looked great when the red paint was new.
It did tend to fade quickly enough. The road freights of this line that traveled the old Illinois Central route across Northern Illinois and Iowa often had huge locomotive consists - the roster was largely a mix of battered old things in worn out Milwaukee or ICG paint. This is the only location in Chicago that I ever saw this railroad away from its home rails.



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