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Images: These pictures are not censored for quality. What one person considers a bad or useless picture may be exactly what someone else is looking for. I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them.
Videos: These videos are very big, which is why railfanning videos are so rare on line. As long as Windows Media Player says "Connecting" it is working, even it if appears to be taking a very long time. It says "Connecting" until it has finished downloading the video. Please be patient. If you are unable to play these videos with Windows Media player, a problem which exists with some versions of Media Player and (sometimes) with Internet Explorer versions lower than 6, I strongly recommend the use of Quicktime if it is available. If you are using Linux, mplayer needs to be told that the videos have a bit depth of 16 (-bpp 16) to work.
Filenames refer to location, date (dd.mm.yy), and camera-assigned four digit id number.
Top photos from December, 2019
| December 6th, 2019 | Traveling between Ottawa and home, I decided to finally take the time to look for the QGRY Friday run, which I had passed a few times without ever having time to watch it over the past few years. I found it faster than expected and chased it up the Buckingham spur to the end before carrying on. | |
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| Gatineau, Quebec | (map) Immediately across the border from Ottawa, Gatineau contains the formerly independent city of Hull and houses the Quebec-Gatineau Railway (QGRY) and Hull, Chelsea, and Wakefield (HCW) scenic steam railway. | |
| 98 images | 1 videos | Marks: |
| December 24th, 2019 | We took off on a social and exploratory road trip to the US, catching our first local UP near Watertown, New York. | |
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| Watertown, New York | Watertown is the first major community south of the Canada-US border on the I-81, with some CSX traffic. | |
| 10 images | 1 videos | Marks: |
| December 26th, 2019 | Leaving family near Buffalo, we continued westward, stopping for three eastbounds at the museum at North East. We found the Bessemer and Lake Erie with a rare BLE leader in the yard in Conneaut but could not get a good shot from the one forested vantage we found across the valley, and finished the day with a stop at the Napoleon, Defiance & Western Railroad, a railroad with the dubious distinction of being known for its rather exceptional lack of maintenance. | |
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| Conneaut, Ohio | Steve told me I needed to check Conneaut -- and you do too. It is an interesting town on the south shore of Lake Erie which is not easy to explore but has plenty to see if you are willing to go down small single lane roads to their ends. | |
| 22 images | No videos | Marks: |
| Napolean, Ohio | ||
| 58 images | 1 videos | Marks: |
| North East, Pennsylvania | (map) The town of North East is the home of an excellent museum of preserved railway equipment, including a weird GE-built "little Joe" Russian electric locomotive that was never delivered to the former Cold War adversary. The museum is on the web here. The museum is built around a well-preserved station on the busy CSX Buffalo-Chicago line and encourages railfans with a scanner blaring over the platform and a clear view of both the CSX and NS lines. | |
| 104 images | 5 videos | Marks: |
| December 27th, 2019 | Railfanning Chicago is rather like shooting fish in a barrel if you handle the city itself. I am a country boy and so it isn't really my cup of tea. We did manage to catch a little bit of action as we entered and exited the city for (non-railfan) touristy reasons, although the day was off toa slightly bad start when I followed a different line from the one I thought I was following out of the city: with an EOT squawking away nearby but no sign of the train it was attached to, we admired the diamond at Stillwell for a few minutes before carrying on. | |
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| Chicago, Illinois | Chicago is without a doubt the rail capital of North America, but it does require some preparation to explore and a lot of patience to deal with what passes for traffic flow in the city. | |
| 57 images | No videos | Marks: |
| Gary, Indiana | Gary is the Indiana side of Chicago and is a fairly significant rail hub in its own right. | |
| 20 images | 1 videos | Marks: |
| Shabbona, Illinois | ||
| 7 images | No videos | Marks: |
| Stillwell, Indiana | Stillwell is the junction of the CN and the Anacostia and Pacific. | |
| 6 images | No videos | Marks: |
| December 28th, 2019 | We followed the Iowa Interstate (IAIS) from Davenport to Omaha, catching an eastbound intermodal and ethanol train almost immediately, and parked but noisy power with a work clearance but not moving at Newport. We finished the day at the west end of the line watching headlights reflecting off the sides of nearby freight cars without the power ever actually materialising, to the amusement of a friendly railway security officer. | |
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| Council Bluffs, Iowa | Council Bluffs is the Iowa side of the city of Omaha, Nebraska and is the western terminus of the IAIS. | |
| 26 images | No videos | Marks: |
| Newport, Iowa | Newport is east of Des Moines on the Iowa Interstate Railroad. | |
| 11 images | No videos | Marks: |
| Walcott, Iowa | Walcott is the first town west of Davenport on the IAIS. | |
| 31 images | 1 videos | Marks: |
| December 29th, 2019 | We wandered our way from Omaha, Nebraska to the middle of Kansas and had a banner day of catching parked shortline equipment and briefly chasing a westbound coal train. | |
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| Abilene, Kansas | Abilene is the home of the President Eisenhower library and a diverse set of rail operations leaving little room for railfan boredom. A must-see if you are in Kansas. | |
| 37 images | No videos | Marks: |
| Ashland, Nebraska | Ashland is just west of Omaha along the BNSF with heavy coal traffic. | |
| 54 images | 2 videos | Marks: |
| Concordia, Kansas | Concordia is along the KYLE in north-central Kansas. | |
| 18 images | No videos | Marks: |
| Fairmont, Nebraska | Fairmont is just south of the I-80 on state highway 81 and host to a petrochemical company with extensive rail service and a local switcher. | |
| 6 images | No videos | Marks: |
| Geneva, Nebraska | Geneva is along the state highway 81 corridor south of York, Nebraska and home to some obscure abandoned equipment along the side of the highway. | |
| 12 images | No videos | Marks: |
| Omaha, Nebraska | Omaha is a great spot to explore. Kenefik Park is home to a DD40 and Big Boy 4-8-8-4 twinned together in a static display on a hill top, a tribute to UP's rich heritage in the city. There is also plenty of BNSF activity and other systems nearby and over the river in Iowa. | |
| 37 images | No videos | Marks: |
| Salina, Kansas | Salina is a very busy railroad meeting spot in central Kansas. | |
| 54 images | 1 videos | Marks: |
| Solomon, Kansas | Solomon is between Salina and Abilene on the KYLE, UP, and BNSF. | |
| 7 images | No videos | Marks: |
| Waverly, Nebraska | Waverly is between Omaha and Lincoln on the I-80 and BNSF corridors. | |
| 39 images | 1 videos | Marks: |
| December 30th, 2019 | Heading south out of Kansas, we just barely caught a six-engine eastbound BNSF whose symbol we didn't catch in Newton and stayed in the town of Ardmore, Oklahoma, where we caught a slightly different kind of train... | |
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| Ardmore, Oklahoma | Ardmore is a town near the Oklahoma-Texas border with a significant public, free Christmas-season light show. | |
| No images | 1 videos | Marks: |
| Newton, Kansas | Newton is the home of significant yard and easily viewed locomotive shop on the BNSF in central Kansas. | |
| 48 images | 2 videos | Marks: |
| Oklahoma City, Oklahoma | Oklahoma City is the state capitol and home to several railways. | |
| 10 images | 1 videos | Marks: |
| Wellington, Kansas | Wellington is a BNSF junction near the Oklahoma border along the I-35. | |
| 19 images | No videos | Marks: |
| December 31st, 2019 | We worked our way through the jungles of Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston Texas on our way to spend New Year in the tourist trap of Galveston. | |
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| Carrollton, Texas | Carrollton is one of the northern parts of the 11-county country-sized metroplex known as Dallas-Fort Worth, and is home to a chaotic junction of several lines. | |
| 22 images | 1 videos | Marks: |
| Wilmer, Texas | On the southern end of the Dalls-Fort Worth metroplex is Wilmer, with a significant UP intermodal yard using contract switchers. | |
| 26 images | No videos | Marks: |