I have made a post about a Nickel Plate Road route before, but it was about two sentences. I'd like to expand on that proposal in this post. Description: The New York, Chicago, and St. Louis railroad, also known as the Nickel Plate Road ran from Buffalo, New York to Chicago, Illinois, and to St. Louis Missouri with its mainline running through major midwestern cities along the way. Two of the major stops along the NKP was Bellevue, Ohio and Fort Wayne, Indiana. The route between these to destinations were the stomping grounds for the NKP's famous Berkshires, as well as many other forms of steam locomotives such as their Mikados, and Hudsons. One of the major yads along this route is the Nickel Plate's Blair Yard in Fostoria Ohio. This line was also traversed by GP9, and Alco PA diesel units during the transition era and the years following the steam era. During the 1950s, a large section of track in Fort Wayne was elevated as to fix the traffic issues the NKPs mainline through downtown Fort Wayne was causing. Upon this projects completion, Berkshire #767 was there for the ribbon cutting ceremony of the new elevated track. This route served these cities well and would make a great addition to Train Simulator, and would be nice change of pace from the numerous US mountain pass routes that are available in the store right now.
This could be cool. I like the Alco PAs. The livery is nice. The route needs to be transition era. Locos could include an NKP Berkshire, a GP7/9, an Alco PA (A/B), and maybe some other steam and diesel locos.
I wish the NKP put more of their diesels into this paint scheme instead of the black with yellow stripes. This paint scheme is beautiful!
Indeed it is. Shame the NKP/N&W didn't save more of those locos and passenger cars for preservation. Would've made for some stunning excursion consists.
Well, allow me to clarify on this one. From what I can gather, there wasn't a SINGLE NKP passenger diesel preserved. The current 190 started its life as Santa Fe 62L, eventually went to the D&H, then on down to Mexico, and now Doyle McCormack's turned it into his personal NKP liveried PA.
The Nickel Plate never really did get any streamlined lightweight RPO's. Guess they had a mindset of, "if it still works, don't replace it." I'm honestly surprised no one's tried to rebuild 170 for mainline excursions. She'd certainly draw one heck of a crowd, just like 587, 759 and 765. But anyways, the Hudsons would be nice locos to have available as a separate DLC with scenarios on the route running on the fast crack passenger trains on down to a local freight, or even doubleheading with a Berk on a regular mainline freight, because they certainly did all of those things.
On the topic of excursions, the NKP would use Hudson #173 on fantrips and NRHS excursions out of Chicago towars the end of the steam era. Some of these trips were captured on film by Newt Rossiter during his numerous trips down south to document the end of big steam in North America.
I do believe I've seen some of those films on YouTube. They're rather nice to watch, even if they ain't of the best quality.
