The last one

The Gulf, Mobile, and Ohio was a midwest line that ran between Chicago and New Orleans, with a branch off to St. Louis. By the time I shot this picture - sometime in the late 1980s - the line had merged with the Illinois Central and been part of the Illinois Central Gulf Railroad for almost 20 years. That this unit still wore the pre merger paint scheme indicated the line wasn't in any great hurry to reimage their locomotives.

My buddy and I had stopped in Centralia, Illinois, home of the ICG shops, on one of our western road trips. We lucked into getting a shot of this train entering the yard. Highly surprised we were to find it in this nearly antique paint scheme, since the ICG had undergone at least two system repaints since the merger. We knew we had come across something quite unique. And, indeed we had. In talking with some of the workers in the yard, we learned that this was the last unit in the GM&O paint, and we had witnessed it's last trip as such. It was due to enter the paint booth directly, and to come out with a fresh coat of black and white.

Besides the historic paint job, we also managed to capture one of the immense concrete coaling towers, used to fuel steam locomotives back in the day. By this time, there were very few of them left standing.