Marker Light
This is a side marker light on an old Chicago & North Western bi-level commuter car at Union. When I was a kid living in Chicago, my Dad would ride one of these to and from work every day. We'd take them from the suburbs down to NorthWestern station, now gone.
The C&NW ultimately had 292 of these cars, built by Pullman-Standard (except the first 16 which were built by St. Louis Car Company) starting in the 1950's. They stayed in service up through the sale of the commuter service to RTA in 1977.
Some of the cars survived longer than that, some were sold to other railroads as RTA acquired newer equipment. I have seen one, back in the 1980's, overpainted in Amtrak colors on a commuter line between my town of Valparaiso, IN and Chicago. I knew the car's heritage because there was a big scratch on the side of one of them, and C&NW yellow was shining proudly through the Amtrak silver.
Olympus E-1, Zuiko 14-54mm
Date: 06/03/2007
Owner: Paul Braun