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BIG BOY HOT SPOT Location If you’re for Union Pacific Big Boy Hot Spot this summer, don’t miss the Dexter, Missouri, community. Dexter is situated in the rural southeast corner of Missouri in Stoddard County, about halfway between St. Louis and Memphis. It is surrounded by fertile soil, vast row-crop farmland, and straight, high speed […]
Introduction to the Matteson, Illinois, railfan hotspot Matteson’s status as a truly significant railroad junction dates only to October 2011, when Canadian National completed a new connection between its north-south former Illinois Central line, and its recently acquired Elgin, Joliet & Eastern, the belt line that gave it a way to avoid much of […]
One in an occasional series on Senior Editor David Lassen’s favorite Chicago-area railfan locations Railfanning LaFox, Illinois Well west of Chicago, in a still mostly rural area with suburbia gradually encroaching, is La Fox, Ill., on Union Pacific’s Geneva Subdivision. There’s barely a community to speak of, but it does have a Metra station. […]
Trains Senior Editor David Lassen spends much of his free time in the Chicago area. This is the first in a series of Trains.com articles on his favorite rail photography locations. UPDATED Dec. 15, 2021, with removal of shoofly. BNSF Railway’s celebrated “racetrack” — the triple-track mainline of the Chicago Division between downtown Chicago and […]
KANSAS CITY — With the recent announcement that Canadian Pacific is acquiring Kansas City Southern, railfans will no doubt be heading to the KCS to capture the last days of the smallest of the Class I railroads. But where should you go to catch the action on such a vast system? Here’s a few highlights, […]
LOCATION: Alexandria, Va.’s Union Station is located on King Street, and is about 8 miles south of Washington, D.C., on CSX Transportation’s main line between the Northeast and Florida. Passenger service is provided by both Amtrak and Virginia Railway Express. Highway access is provided by numerous surface streets including U.S. Route 1. The Washington-area Capital […]
Perched high on a hillside on a lonely but breathtakingly beautiful stretch of Interstate 80 just outside of Echo, Utah, must be the best rest stop in America – for railfans. With a sweeping view of the rough, red, sandstone cliffs of Echo Canyon, frequent trains on Union Pacific’s original transcontinental route, and convenient benches […]
North East is a borough of about 4,200 people and is the northernmost incorporated community in Pennsylvania. It is little more than a mile from the shore of Lake Erie, and just 3 miles off Interstate 90. The community, located in northwestern Pennsylvania, is named North East for its location in northeastern Erie County. The […]
Scenic Bear Mountain is located about 45 miles north of New York City along the Hudson River. It offers a host of vantage points along the CSX Transportation “River Line” and Metro-North Hudson Line. Locations between Cold Spring and Peekskill, including Bear Mountain Bridge, provide public access to watch and photograph trains. The area is […]
The Quad Cities of Davenport and Bettendorf, Iowa, and Rock Island and Moline, Ill., straddle the Mississippi River, creating an historic intersection of river and rails. In April 1856, the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific’s predecessors opened the first Mississippi River crossing, known as the Government Bridge, at Davenport. Later, a riverboat struck the bridge […]
The nation’s 10th largest city, San Jose has been flirting with the 1 million population mark for several years. Within the city and surrounding Santa Clara County are 74 passenger rail stations, 62 of them on the Valley Transportation Authority’s light rail system. The remainder serve one of three passenger carriers: Amtrak, Caltrain, and the […]
A century ago, a quirky group of railroads built with their rails just 2 feet apart sprawled across the wilderness of Maine. The narrow gauge railroads were cheaper to build and could go places standard gauge roads could not. By the 1920s, there were five narrow gauge railroads in the state, from the 112-mile Sandy […]
