| Chicago Great Western Railway NW2 23 in Chicago, Illinois on May 9, 1965, Ektachrome by Chuck Zeiler. This locomotive was built in May 1948 (c/n 5543) on EMD Order E916, retained its CGW number briefly while in C&NW's employ, was renumbered to C&NW 1026 in 1971, traded to EMD in August 1986 and scrapped by Saint Louis Auto Shredding, Madison, Illinois. It has one unusual characteristic for an NW2, it has a full height radiator, not clearly illustrated by this photo but there are other photos of #23 on this site that clearly show the radiator. Locomotives built after this one still have the typical NW2 half height radiator, so my guess is that it might have had an accident that required the replacement of the radiator after the full height radiator was introduced by EMD. If anyone has any further information about this, a comment would be greatly appreciated. Edit: I joined the Yahoo.CGW Group to find more info, and two members (Tim Vana and Dustin D. Smith) offered the following: (from Tim): IIRC, this (unit) was wrecked or otherwise returned to EMD for rebuild. The only hoods available would have full radiators as used on all-post NW2 EMD switchers. Several railroads (e.g. Missouri Kansas Texas (MKT) rebuilt their NW2's with SW1200 style full radiators. (from Dustin): CGW 23 was sent to EMD for repair in 1959. (It was involved in minor wreck, needing minor body rebuild. The image I have seen of the unit at EMD, the damaged was indeed minor and doubtful that the hood was replaced with the larger grill but rather patched or maybe at most, the first section was replaced. CGW 23 still had its stepped hood after the minor rebuild suggesting the hood was not entirely replaced. What is also interesting is this was the first EMD NW2 repainted on the CGW (away from its factory paint scheme into Maroon Dip). The unit also appeared to receive the modern front and rear handrails with drop steps. Note that the bell has a rope attached. |