This Space for Rent

The platonic ideal of a road switcher

577 sits by the Winona depot on an April night

There will come a day when they pry my cold dead hands off the scanner and I can no longer post scans of the Milwaukee’s 4 rsc2m roadswitchers, but that day is not today. (The day in the photo was April 8, 1972, about a year before I discovered the Milwaukee Road’s roundhouse – and 576-579 – on the north side of La Crosse and started obsessively watching them until they were all pulled out of service and sent away for scrap.)