For over 125 years, the C&NW Railroad played an important role
in Americanrailroads. It is important in the construction of the first transcontinental railroad by shipping supplies from Chicago to UP's rail head in maha, NE. This was the begining af a wonderful friendship between the two railroad companies. From then on, the C&NW was the UP's Chicago connection. This friendship lasted until 1994, when the mighty Union Pacific Railroad company purchased the C&NW. Since then, the UP has wiped out nearly every trace on the once prosperous C&NW: the famous "ball and bar" has fallen to the UP's shield, the yellow and green geeps are getting a coat of "Armour Yellow".
On Oct 14th,1997, I went to West Ames Jct and I saw a UP "No Tresspassing"
sign near the road. It looked like any one of the million other NoTresspassing sign that line our nation's railroads, so I thought nothing of
it, until something caught my eye. In the lower right hand corner of the
sign, next to the words "Union Pacific Railroad", I saw a small sticker.
It
was the familiar CNW "ball and bar" logo. The UP may try to erase every
trace of the CNW, but it is still alive in our hearts!
¡@
Dan Kelly's C&NW train model.
In 1997 March, I took this photo with
Dan in Ames. This was the last snow storm in that winter. We were lucky enough
to have this smooky C&NW engine in a snow white world. ¡]Photo by Chih-wen
Hung¡^