NICTD's New Diesel Paint

Overlooking NICTD's Michigan City Yard ... NICTD's two diesels tucked away but not out of sight.

At first I thought it was a trick of perspective and the pantograph belonged to something parked behind the Geep, but then I found another photo online of the same loco, and yeah, it does have a pantograph! That's quite unique!

I presume it's for sleet scraping?

More likely used as the wire ground when working on the Catenary.

Interesting that they brought back orange/maroon after trying to convince us for 30 years that this was a grey gov't agency called NICTD, now it's an orange passenger train called South Shore again. Curious what made that happen...

Also I have heard the pan is for sleet scraping.

Finally was 1000 regeared? I seem to remember the crews saying it was too much of a hot dog and couldn't start a heavy rail train well.

It is good to see NICTD embrace their heritage. I can understand "back in the day" them wanting to remain separate from the orange freight railroad. And the move to modern stainless rail cars was a step away from the orange cars commuters hated (primarily due to age and maintenance). But after 30 years of owning the track and 43 years of supporting passenger service it is their heritage.

You make a good point. If NICTD has been around for 43 years, the Insull/C&O private period was 41 years and Lake Shore was 20 years before that. At this point not only has NICTD been a reality for a long time, NICTD is the most prevalent reality the railroad has ever known.

One thing to be proud of as a Hoosier for years, I really respect NICTD's pragmatism and efficiency in running a government railroad. They do a pretty good job considering the resources they get.

I agree. Indiana gets a bad rap with people talking about the negatives (not funding the Valpo Dinky, ending funding for the Hoosier State, not supporting commuter rail or light rail in Indy) and they forget about NICTD - which is moving full steam ahead with the double track project and West Lake line. They are also funding grade separations to improve traffic around freight railroads.

justalurker66 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 09, 2020 6:01 pm I agree. Indiana gets a bad rap with people talking about the negatives (not funding the Valpo Dinky, ending funding for the Hoosier State, not supporting commuter rail or light rail in Indy) and they forget about NICTD - which is moving full steam ahead with the double track project and West Lake line. They are also funding grade separations to improve traffic around freight railroads.

Yep, I would say Indiana would rate in the bottom five if we were to poll the guys over on the Amtrak forum, and I keep pointing to the state-run commuter train (that is ELECTRIC!!!) and they stick their head in the sand. The Hoosier was a bad deal over a very tough route and schedule. I don't blame Indiana for that. The Valpo Dummy was a bad decision but it was also a different era when we genuinely thought passenger trains were still slowly heading for oblivion. I remember reading the magazines at the time and they were sure the South Bend service and Blue Island branch were going to disappear some day. The Pere Marquette lost funding a few times, also. We all took elimination of A/B on the L as another sign of decay.

Regarding Valpo Dummy service, perhaps the state thought the general region was adequately served by the South Shore, and/or that the service wasn't really viable without a few more frequencies. 1-2/day is bare bones and it's hard to make an investment in the physical plant like stations and yards for only 1-2 trains. But that was also right around the time NICTD bought another 15-20 cars, which we never thought would happen.

What were these units before they appeared in this paint? I have been seeing photos of these surfacing for a bit, but don't live local so don't know what they were before. Where these repaintes of something else or delivered from a shop in this scheme?

NICD 1000(GP38-2) - Purchased 1994 - painted gray until recently
was GTW 6405 (GP40)
originally DTI 405 (built 6/1968)

NICD 1001(GP38-3) - Rebuilt 2019 - painted for NICTD
was UP 1985, NREX 1985 and MKT 328(GP38AC)
originally IC 9503 (built 2/1970)

Another interesting note in the NICD 1001's history is its time spent as ICG 1776 (2nd)

IHB 4010 and NICD 1001 are both former bicentennial units, pretty interesting they both work in the Chicagoland area