The Flickr Random Image Generatr

"(Fleckenhyäne)
(Lachhyäne)
(Johann Jakob Kaup: 1828)
Volkel (Zie Zoo)"

The strongman sculpture that replaced the old Millennium Man is gone now. For a short while it stood here — a polished metal figure holding a globe overhead, built by the Big Fish Company — part landmark, part curiosity.

Behind it, the Mambo and Bodero shopfronts,
the bright orange and yellow panels of the building still catching whatever light the day offers.

Cars parking spots are mostly empty, pot plants line the walkway, and the whole area resonates quietly.

Mauersegler (Apus apus)
(c) Claudia Wirtz

Yellow fungus on tree trunk in Tasmania

For this week’s Freight Car Friday here is an old covered hopper that caught my eye entrained on Providence and Worcester Railroad local PR-3 rolling through ORMS interlocking on Main 7 at MP 186 of Amtrak’s New Haven Line main headed to the Port of Providence. This car is now lettered SLWX 1137 for its present owner Saltine Warrior and is used in short haul rock salt service between the port and Vermont salt sheds. The car is clearly of Chicago and Northwestern Railway provenance and is a 263K, 60 ft. 4750 cu ft covered hopper built in Feb. 1981. I’m not sure of the original number or manufacturer of this car but suspect it was originally in the 190000-19099 series of 1000 cars built that year the first 500 by Berwick Forge and Fabricating and the second 500 by Ingalls Shipbuilding at the Decatur, AL plant. If anyone can confirm the manufacturer and original number I’d love to know.



The car still carries its classic ball and bar logo with the ‘Employee Owned’ moniker from the period after 1972 when the struggling granger was spun off from the parent company to its employees after they were unsuccessful in selling or merging the road. The idea first belonged to Larry Provo, who had joined the company as an accountant at age 29 and would go on to succeed Heineman as president. After two years of negotiations, the employee buyout deal was completed in early 1972. Under the terms of the agreement, employee purchasers had to commit to buy at least $1 million worth of stock. In May, $3.6 million worth of shares were bought when the stock was offered, making the company the largest employee-owned corporation in the United States. One thousand of the 14,000 employees of CNW took part in the purchase, ranging from Provo himself, who invested $100,000, the maximum allowed, to secretaries who bought the minimum ten shares for $500. The official name of the company was then changed to the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company. In order to create an easier mechanism for diversifying, a new holding company, CNW Corporation, was formed in 1985 and after about that date the employee owned logo was no longer used.



In 1989, CNW Corporation was purchased in a leveraged buyout by a group of investors that was led by Blackstone Capital Partners L.P. The group also included the securities firm Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette, the Union Pacific Railroad, and CNW senior mangement. The buyout was engineered in order to avert a hostile takeover attempt by Japonica Partners, a New York-based investment group. Valued at $950 million, the buyout exceeded Japonica’s bid of $747 million. A new holding company, Chicago and North Western Holdings Corporation, was thus formed to take the place of CNW Corporation, which continued to exist on paper as a subsidiary to “Holdings” and parent company to the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company. As part of a $1.2 million recapitalization of CNW, the company went public once again in 1992 with a $200 million stock offering, but this final era was short lived and in 1995 the Union Pacific bought out the shares it didn’t own and merged the CNW out of existence into its vast system.

Providence, Rhode Island
Monday April 20, 2026