The LAST catch of a un-WAMXized WSOR SD40-2 and Middleton Polar Express Deadhead w/E-units 11/6/2016

In the fall of 2016, Watco Companies, which had acquired the Wisconsin and Southern Railroad from prior owner/CEO Bill Gardner four years earlier, was finally in the process of relettering/numbering all of the WSOR locomotives into the WAMX roster. I went out this day to catch the deadhead move of the consist for the third and, as it turned out, last year of the Middleton Polar Express, operated over a short section of the WSOR Prairie du Chien Subdivision with equipment provided by Iowa Pacific Holdings. Prior to this train's arrival I caught what turned out to be my last-ever SD40-2 leading under its WSOR reporting mark and number. Fittingly, this was WSOR 4007, which back in 2007-early '08 when I was new to railfanning and really trying to expand my roster of documented engines, I kept catching leading over and over. Then the Iowa Pacific consist highballs through, led by ex-CN/IC E9A SLRG 101 (built 1953 for CB&Q). You'd think they could have cleaned the graffiti off those ex-NJT coaches, but at least the 101 looks fairly decent and has a cool-sounding Nathan M5 horn. Bringing up the rear of the consist is fellow E9A SLRG 103; the red and gray paint gives away that this is a homecoming of sorts for the unit, which was part of the A-B-A set of E9s WSOR put together in summer 2008, which due to the Great Recession beginning that fall followed by the sale to Watco at the start of 2012, only ran together a handful of times. Following the financial collapse of IPH in 2019, both units are now on the Aberdeen, Carolina and Western Railroad. We get several more run-bys of the train, as far as Stoughton. Foolishly, I never chased any of the actual excursion runs of that years' Polar Express (or 2015's).