An Alco PA (left) and RS11 pose at the mouth of the tunnel on the HO model railroad layout of Edward Ribinskas.
Although I grew up in east central Illinois just 10 miles or so from the Nickel Plate Road’s St. Louis line, I never saw a NKP train. I occasionally saw the tracks, but that was it.
Most of my eyewitness sightings of NKP rolling stock have been at the Mad River & NKP Museum in Bellevue.
For one evening on a recent Sunday, though, the Nickel Plate came back to life. I had spent the afternoon with Marty Surdyk and Edward Ribinskas railfaning in Lake County. During the day we spotted four Norfolk Southern trains on the former NKP Chicago-Buffalo mainline.
That evening at Ed’s house, he brought out some of his NKP motive power fleet. Powering a coal train were an RS11 and an RS36. Pulling a manifest freight was a NKP “Blue Bird.”
In real life, the NKP PA locomotives pulled passenger trains, including a pair of trains that operated Cleveland and St. Louis.
But on a model railroad, you can create any parallel universe that you desire. And you can make anything from the past come alive again.
Article and Photographs by Craig Sanders
The “Blue Bird” climbs a grade on a trestle as the coal train is about to pass below.
By the time Penn Central came along in 1968, the Nickel Plate had been merged into the Norfolk & Western and the “Blue Birds” were long gone. But anything is possible on a model railroad layout.
No train runs on Ed’s layout without a caboose.
Head end and rear end align near the entrance to the tunnel.
Tags: model railroading, Nickel Plate locomotives, Nickel Plate Road, NKP motive power
akronrrclub.wordpress.com 
February 28, 2014 at 5:48 pm |
ME, TOO!
February 28, 2014 at 5:53 pm |
Reblogged this on By the Mighty Mumford and commented:
ONE “BLUE BIRD” PA IS BEING WORKED ON/RESTORED UP IN WASHINGTON STATE!