Although Marias Pass is among the lowest railroad crossings of the Continental Divide in the United States at 5,213 feet, nothing is small about BNSF Railway’s route through northwest Montana. Built by James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railway in the 1890s, the line across Marias Pass remains a critical transcontinental route to the Pacific Northwest […]
Marion, Ohio, is a post-industrial Rust Belt city that is famous for the Marion Power Shovel Co., one-time supplier of heavy-duty industrial machinery to the world. Because of its industrial prowess, four major railroads once served the city of 35,000: Chesapeake & Ohio, Erie, New York Central, and Pennsylvania. This variety and density lead to […]
California is known throughout the country for its passenger trains — and its traffic jams. The city of Martinez is the perfect location to get away for a day on Amtrak, with 42 daily passenger trains scheduled to stop on weekdays. Those trains connect Martinez to Oakland, Sacramento, Stockton, Fresno, and many other cities within […]
In Redding, Calif., California Highway 273 (old Hwy. 99) lets you follow the action on Union Pacific Railroad’s north-south I-5 corridor. The former Southern Pacific main line through the area is now part of UP’s Valley Subdivision, from Dunsmuir at milepost 321.4 to East Roseville at milepost 106.4. Photographers will love the climate: Redding has […]
Today’s Roosevelt Road is a wonderful place to watch passenger trains. More than 1,000 trains a day from Amtrak, Chicago Transit Authority, Metra, and South Shore cross the busy thoroughfare. The area provides a safe venue for watching and photographing trains in an urban environment. TRAIN WATCHING Roosevelt Road offers overhead views of three rail […]
Glendale, Ohio, incorporated in 1855, is a north suburb of Cincinnati. The community is located along CSX Transportation’s Cincinnati Terminal Subdivision, which also hosts trains from Amtrak and Norfolk Southern. The Cincinnati & Hamilton Railroad opened a line between its namesake Ohio cities in 1848. The railroad, renamed the Cincinnati, Hamilton & Dayton, leased the […]
Hamlet, N.C., sits at a critical CSX junction, the hub of the former Seaboard Air Line Railway. To the north runs the Aberdeen Subdivision to Raleigh. (The stub-ended route continues north to Norlina, and once went to Petersburg, Va.) The Hamlet Subdivision extends south toward Columbia, S.C., and beyond to Charleston, S.C., and Florida. The […]
Located 45 miles southwest of the Chicago Loop, Joliet is a city of 147,000, the fourth largest in Illinois. Just as much of the former Santa Fe Railway accompanies the former Route 66 across the Southwest, the two pair up briefly in Joliet — now as BNSF Railway and Illinois Route 53. TRAIN WATCHING For […]
La Crosse, Wis., is a city of 51,000 people located about 150 miles southeast of Minneapolis, Minn. The city was once home to the G. Heileman Brewing Co., maker of Old Style beer. For a city its size, there is a remarkable variety of railroading, with scenery to boot. Train-watchers frequently see motive power of […]
Lynchburg, Va., marks the crossing for Norfolk Southern’s Southern Railway main line from Washington to Atlanta with the former Norfolk & Western main from Roanoke to Norfolk, and CSX’s former Chesapeake & Ohio James River line from Clifton Forge to Richmond and Newport News. The former Southern main sees 15-20 trains per day, including passenger, […]
About 20 miles east of Tucson, Ariz., is a vastly underrated train-watching location: Cienega Bridge. The bridge carries Union Pacific’s former Southern Pacific Sunset Route over itself and Cienega Creek. The main line is split through this section of the desert, and each main track has its own dedicated right-of-way. In 1880, SP built what […]
The name Clearwater summarizes what this Florida city, a popular vacation destination, is all about. Imagine the Gulf of Mexico’s clear blue water alongside beautiful white sand beaches. Now imagine the sound of two GP40-2s rumbling down the middle of a busy street beneath palm trees, just blocks from one of those beaches. Then, just […]
