I visited Chicago a number of times in my teens, and one railfan trip I always made was to ride the old Illinois Central Pullman green electrics. I've always liked the Illinois Central, and over the years I've added models to my collection. The most recent is a Walthers Mainline IC GP9 in the 1967 orange scheme.
While I now tend to get Walthers Mainline locos with the limited function ESU sound decoder installed, I had an extra ESU LokPilot Standard non-sound decoder on hand, so I ordered this one DCC ready. These locos are very quiet and run very smoothly, and they're easy to run without sound even if they have the sound decoder, so I have the option if I don't want sound to drive me up the wall. The roughly $40-50 extra for the sound version is a bargain, and it has the benefit that I don't have to fuss with removing the shell, losing screws, dislodging handrails, etc etc to install a decoder when I get it.
The orange scheme began on IC in 1967, but many IC locos remained in black well past the 1972 merger with GM&O. 30 years ago I got four Atlas/Kato GP7s lettered for IC in the original black when they came out.
I installed an NCE DA-SR decoder in this one around eight years ago. I pulled it out to see how much work I might need to do to speed match it with the new GP9, but right away I discovered it would accelerate, but it wouldn't decelerate -- par for the course for an NCE product. After quite a bit of grief, I learned the best way to keep on an even keel is to avoid NCE products. I'll need to replace this decoder now.
However, I still have three other Atlas/Kato IC GP7s that I'll need to install new decoders in, so I may as well just get on with a whole IC project.
Here's a Soho brass Illinois Central caboose I painted 30 years ago or so as well:
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