Cabbage Pan on the old Milwaukee Road

In the mid-1930s, Milwaukee Road introduced its high-speed streamlined Hiawatha on its Chicago-Milwaukee-Twin Cities route where elegant purpose-built shrouded 4-4-2 and 4-6-4 Alco steam locomotives whisked trains along in excess of 110mph.

Today, Amtrak’s Hiawathas have Siemens Chargers on the Milwaukee end, and former F40PH Control-Cab/baggage cars, known as ‘Cabbages’ on the Chicago-end.

While Amtrak provides an excellent corridor service, today top speed is just 79mph.

I can’t help but think that as a nation we’ve lost the plot on this one.

We went from elegant, fast steam streamliners to this?

Panning my Fujifilm XT1 plus 27mm lens in parallel with Amtrak’s fast moving Hiawatha has allowed for the effect of speed and motion. ISO 200, 1/125thof a second. Note: that my shutter speed wasn’t especially slow.

Tracking the Light Posts Daily.

 

 

 

 

2 comments on “Cabbage Pan on the old Milwaukee Road

  1. Bryan Patrick Lean on said:

    Used to live on Hwy KR. Nothing like railfanning in fields of cabbage.

  2. “I can’t help but think that as a nation we’ve lost the plot on this one.” Care to speculate who are the chief culprits?

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