The Texas sky misses nothing.
It stood as witness when 80 years ago the last of the big BK-63 Berkshires migrated north on the International-Great Northern and crested the Blanco River grade at Kyle, Texas as they made their way towards the final roost in the company shops at Sedalia, Missouri. It was there that a great metamorphosis took place, and when they re-emerged from a chrysalis state, their 63-inch drivers had gained an additional foot of diameter, and the pilot truck had sprouted a second axle.
And as the Northerns of the 2101-class were born to the Missouri Pacific, so were the big Berkshires gone forever.
Today, under that same expanse of Texas sky that stands watch over the ramparts of the Balcones Escarpment, a Screaming Eagle tribute to all the little roads that made up the celebrated Missouri Pacific digs in to the railhead with her silvered AC stiletto talons and exerts almost triple the amount of starting tractive effort as the Berkshires did, a quality that is imperative when the RHXNYC-22, in the form of 4,600 feet of powdered cement, is exerting 9,500 tons of force on the drawbar.
She’s a fashionably attired two-toned Grand Dame in full regalia, monarch over northbound tonnage, leading the conquest of the Blanco River grade in the grand tradition of her legendary heritage as she rolls her charges along the Route of the Eagles and up out of the shimmering heat waves of a sweltering Texas-hot August day.
In perhaps a nod to the significance of the eagle spread across the prow and the buzzsaw baubles at her cheeks, Omaha has kindly graced the old I-GN main with this magnificent matriarch.
She has become sought-after royalty; a favorite of the trackside paparazzi as she struts along the old MoPac high iron, a refreshing blue lagoon surrounded by an atoll of Armor yellow, and, for those old enough to remember flocks of spark-arrested bluebird Geeps lugging tonnage through the hazy days of their youth, there is a great tugging at the heartstrings of nostalgia.
And one must wonder what old man Jenks would think.
Rick Malo©2019
At 11:15 on the scorching morning of August 22nd, 2019, SD70ACe 1982 and SD70AH 8980 bring the northbound RHXNYC-22 up out of the Blanco River valley and into Kyle Texas. She’ll stop and hold the main just short of the Ranch Road 150 crossing and wait for the southbound LF28 local coming out of Mountain City to take the siding.