Slipping out of Union Station, one of the last runs for the night on the Metra Southwest Service is bound for Manhattan (the one in Illinois). Heading under a multitude of overhead signals guiding its path out of town, the train picks up speed and the conductor begins to collect tickets, his unmistakable figure (complete with hat) silhouetted in the rear window of the train car. Read the rest of this entry »
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 »
While messing around trying to kill some time in Homewood, IL on Friday night, I was trying some pan shots passing Metra Electric trains shortly after sunset. In this shot, an inbound train for Chicago is slowing for a stop on the Homewood platform, and as you’ll notice, the brake shoes on the lead truck are really heating up the wheel, causing the metal to glow and produce a shower of sparks. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve always loved motion, and attempting to capture it in photos. So after shooting a few late evening skyline shots from the top of one of my favorite parking garages, I took a few minutes to shoot the trains on the Pink Line as they moved through the new-ish Paulina Connector near the United Center on the west side of Chicago. The panning motion gave a neat effect to the photo, blurring the cars speeding by in the opposite direction on Ogden Ave beneath the train. Read the rest of this entry »
I, along with literally thousands of others, spent all of Saturday chasing a steam engine from Minnesota to Chicago. It was a blast, meeting new people, hanging out with friends, and seeing a great looking locomotive steaming down the tracks. We chased from Prairie Du Chien, WI back into the city of Chicago, keeping track of the train all along using tips from friends, as well as the steam engine’s Twitter feed. Yes, this steam engine has a Twitter, and it wasn’t the first, either! You’ve gotta love the combination of old 1940s technology with new 2009 technology, and it was very handy to keep track of the train all along the way and to see how we were doing in the chase.
The fun part of the day however, came after the sun went down. Most of the thousands of chasers had gone home, and the engine was running by itself around the Indiana Harbor Belt railway due to clearance issues with their routing for the following day into Michigan. It was an extremely rare move, and I was excited by the possibility of doing night shots of a steam engine. For our first shot, we set up at the LaVergne Metra depot, and I had my pair of flashes on either side of the LaVergne Ave grade crossing. Soon, the engine approached, clanking along on the close track, spewing lots of smoke, or at least enough smoke to really stand out in a photo. I’ve always loved the photography of O. Winston Link, but I’ve obviously never really understood what it was like to photograph a steam engine at night. Now, I want to do this again, and soon.
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