A Kato E8, two sets of car sides from Union Station Products and two core kits from American Limited make up this Rock Island train.
Modeling the Rock Island’s Quad City Rocket
Kitbashing a 1970’s-era N passenger scale train/Alvin Ho, with photos by Ellen Mi T
he Quad City Rocket operated as train Nos. 5 and 6 between Rock Island, Illinois, and Chicago, Illi-
nois, from 1970 until the end of 1978, just months before the shutdown of the railroad. The Quad City Rocket was ac- tually formed from truncating and amalgamating the Rocky Mountain Rocket (No. 8), the Corn Belt Rocket (No. 9) and Des Moines Rocket (Nos. 5/6) as they overlapped routes. As the advent of Amtrak approached,
the
Rock Island did not buy in like many other larger railroads due to the fee be- ing higher than the deficit it suffered from continuing to operate passenger services. Over the years the train was cut back until it was left with only a single E8 and whichever two coaches the Rock Island could scavenge into service. The consist I decided to model was E8A No.
655, 48-seat leg-rest
coach No. 347 and 56-seat coach No. 52
363, Herington, in 1977, one year be- fore the discontinuation of all passen- ger service on the Rock.
The whole project had actually been floating around for quite some time but I never got around to finishing the train. The Kato E8, two sets of car sides from Union Station Products and two core kits from American Limited was actually on my workbench for over two years. It was only after I had seen the amazing work of others that I was inspired to finish this project.
Locomotive The Rock Island had a total of 13 E8A’s
(Nos. 643 - 655) purchased from EMD be- tween 1950 and March, 1952. Another (No. 656) was rebuilt from an E6 in De- cember, 1953, and others were later pur- chased secondhand from the Union Pacif- ic. Over the lifetime of these locomotives, they were painted in a multitude of
schemes, from the original “Rocket scheme” to the final red and yellow. The specific locomotive modeled, No.
655, was built in March, 1952, as part of EMD Order 2047A and was originally ordered to power “Rocket” trains and commuters out of Chicago. Out of the smorgasbord of E8’s that the Rock Is- land owned, 655 seemed to be one of the few pulling the Quad City Rocket on a regular basis, and it kept consistent fea- tures over the years of service. However, even with prototype pictures, it was hard to pick a specific year to model, as the locomotive continued to deteriorate year after year until the Rock finally ended all passenger services in 1978. I decided to model the condition after pictures taken in late 1977 because it represented the quintessential decrepit state of equipment commonly found on the Rock Island in its final decade. Since the locomotive I had on hand
APRIL 2013
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