Train no. 472

NG503013

Train no. 472

Steam M&E Train

Around eight o'clock in the morning, the automobiles of people enroute to their jobs downtown parade westbound along Massachusetts Avenue as no. 472 is hustled out of town by a stack-rapping J-1, the 5277. In all probability, very few of the motorists turn (or would if they could) to watch the spectacle of one of America's most classic steam engines putting her guts into the job for which she was so well designed - getting a fast wheel on a hefty passenger train, ("Seventy-two's" consist on this occasion numbered thirteen cars.) The home signal in the background is the eastward at DX, an interlocking which is 0.8 miles west of Belt Junction, where the two previous pictures were taken. The tower at DX, with reference to the scene above, is across the main tracks and behind the camera. The track diverging at the left is the main line of the Springfield branch, but the through freight and switch run which are the branch's only trains swing on and off its rails at Eastside, 0.6 miles east of DX, and the portion of the branch between DX and Eastside is used only for switching movements (Springfield branch freights use the Belt between Hill yard and Eastside). The principal function of DX is to govern the crossing of the "B-line" by a single-track section of the Belt extending from Eastside to the NKP-Monon connection, two miles west.

Jeremy Taylor

Jeremy Taylor

2-1/4x3-1/4 neg

Spring, 1955

To buy a copy of this photograph; click here NG503013

377

J-1d

#5277

Alco-Schen

DX, Indianapolis, IN

See NG503013a