CB&Q E-8 #9943A, Naperville, IL, May 9, 1965, photo by Chuck Zeiler

Chicago Burlington & Quincy Railroad E-8 #9943A, Naperville, IL, May 9, 1965, photo by Chuck Zeiler. I lived along the Burlington's triple track main line during 1962-1966 in Naperville and I photographed a few trains during that time. One of the memories I have was the shuffle of the E-units between Aurora and Chicago. On Friday evening, after their assigned runs, the commuter E's would be run back to Chicago for service/rotation, and on Sunday evening, replacements would be run back out to Aurora for Monday morning rush hour trains.

The CB&Q rotated their E-units between Zephyr assignments and commuter service. The commuter service (in CB&Q parlance, the commuter service trains were known as Dinkys) was outbound from Chicago to Aurora in the evening, so at the end of Friday, the E's in Aurora were run back to the Zephyr Pit at 14th St. in Chicago on the next Dinky, to be serviced/inspected and placed in Zephyr service, and the locos coming off Zephyr service would be assigned to Dinkys. One of the chores of the rotation would be the replacement of brake shoes, and this photo illustrates the E's showing off their new shoes as they were run back to Aurora for the Monday morning rush hour.

The train behind this one would have about 5 E's and one coach. All (except the coach) would have blazing brake shoes as the approached the stop at the Naperville station (behind me in this photo). This usually happened late in the evening. I have a photo of this event, but it is just brake shoe glow. I imagine the engineer had an easy time with the schedule, I believe the loco's were all MU'd, so he probably had good acceleration.