Slashing through the Heartland, the former Illinois Central mainline provides a straight shot south from Chicago towards the Gulf of Mexico. The route is fast and straight. And on this foggy night, somewhere out in the country south of the tiny town of Ashkum, IL, a distant headlight is approaching. It’s just another freight train, M398, making 50mph or so with tons of lumber, plastics and chemicals, trying to get into Champaign ahead of the due-pretty-soon City of New Orleans. The glow of the headlight on the foggy horizon silhouettes the grain elevator in Ashkum. Pretty soon, the train will be here, I’d better move the tripod.
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Hugging Chicago’s lakefront, the original Illinois Central Railroad mainline was built in 1856 and electrified in 1926. Today, it is one of Metra’s busiest stretches of commuter railroad, with hundreds of daily trains carrying thousands of commuters into the Loop at Millennium Station. South of Roosevelt Road, there are also a few freight trains along the line, six tracks wide at this point. Sunday night, we were lucky enough to find one of those freight trains approaching the 35th St. overpass, under the ever-present Willis Tower, its headlight illuminating the wide right of way of the Mainline of Mid-America. Read the rest of this entry »
The headlight of an approaching train casts moving shadows upon the snowy scene at Hodgkins, IL.
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Slowly creeping out of a cloud of swirling snow, an oncoming train rolls down the BNSF’s triple track mainline in Riverside, IL with freight from the west coast. Read the rest of this entry »
For some reason, this photo looks very menacing to me. I think it’s the icicles hanging from the rock cut on the right that appear to be the teeth of some giant monster. In reality, it’s nothing more than Norfolk Southern train X4T struggling upgrade through one of the giant cuts on the “Rathole” near Tateville, KY, lighting up everything in it’s path.
Click it if you dare.
