Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Eastbound BNSF Railway freight train at Hodgkins Illinois. May 2006.

A long and heavy freight train, is seen moving east through near southwest suburban Hodgkins Illinois USA. This freight train had to be at least 110 cars long. Unfortunately...I arrived on the scene too late to see the engines on the head end. Industrial and built up as hodgkins is, there is still a large share of prairies and wooded areas as seen to the right of the freight train passing under Me. The bridge in the background with the billboards alongside of it, is the Illinois Rt 55 Stevenson Expressway. The Stevenson Expressway was built in the 1950's, and had replaced part of the old Illinois and Michigan Canal, and part of old Illinois Rt 66. The 1-55 Stevenson Expressway within the Chicago City Limits is actually the old Illinois and Michigan canal bed. The railroad mainline through Hodgkins is the former Atchinson, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad. In 1995, the Burlington Northern Railroad , and the Santa Fe "Merged" and became BNSF. The centerbeam cars below us are hauling stacks of lumber.

1 comment:

tlee169 said...

One of the first extra board assignments I ever went on was a work train to set the 200 foot steel beams for the ATSF bridge over Cicero Avenue in 1964. The steel bridge gang had nice retired heavy weight passenger cars for tools and crew complete with a diner. We had the Steam Crane from Corwith to place the beams and each was on five flat cars. This was part of the I 55 construction project.