I’ve always liked photographs of the locomotive servicing facilities on railroads. And the facilities that service steam locomotives are especially exciting, what with all the smoke and steam in the air.

Jack Delano must have been interested in them also, as he recorded quite a few images of the beasts as they were marshaled through the facility. In this view he captured the line of locomotives as they were fed and watered at the Chicago and North Western’s service area in their Proviso yard near Chicago. The locomotives receive coal, water, sand and lubrication here, and they drop the ashes from their fire boxes into the ash pit. In a large facility such as this, there was almost always a constant line of locomotives going through as seen here.

It’s a cold winter’s day in December of 1942, and if you look carefully, you can see ice cycles hanging on the trailing truck of the 2576!