PHOTOGRAPHY / TRAINS / MODEL TRAINS
Visited Des Plaines Hobbies in the past week, located in Des Plaines, Illinois. Even though it's a traditional hobby shop, it's really caters mostly to model railroaders, as 80% or more of the shop is stocked to the gills with model trains of all shapes and sizes.
Here's a photo of brand new N-Scale (1:160) locomotives from the Japanese manufacturer Kato. The beautiful silver units are Burlington E-5 passenger diesels built for their "Zephyr" passenger trains back in the early 40's. One of these beautiful engines still survives, and can be found in fully operational condition at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union, Illinois.
But the locomotive I'm interested in is the Amtrak SDP40F diesel. Those where the first purpose-built passenger diesels made for Amtrak back in the early 1970's. I'm fascinated by 70's era trains and I'm working on building a small collection of them for my own model railroad. Eventually, the Amtrak SDP40F will be apart of my collection. And I might have a few passenger cars to go with it!