Joseph T. Wagner
Rock Me Mama Like a Wagon Wheel
7400' of double stacked, 53 foot domestics assigned to train Q CHISTO6 04L trade Chicago's bustling metropolis for the rural farmlands, wind turbines and grain elevators that dot the many miles of this bucolic Illinois landscape, seen here sprinting through small-town Ransom, milepost 79 of the Chillicothe Sub, still within the infant stages of their long, westward journey across the old Santa Fe Transcontinental to California. The front runner on this Sunday edition Chicago-Corwith to Stockton intermodal Q is C44-9W #987, which wears the short lived Heritage 1 livery from BNSF's original corporate image, conjured up following a September 1995 merger between both the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe and Burlington Northern railroads. This sharp looking H1 scheme features a large orange band running the length of each locomotive marked with company initials and flanked both above and below by thin yellow stripes and dark green paint, brought all together by BNSF's round "Wagon Wheel" logo adorned on the nose. Formerly relegated to trailing service only, the entire fleet of these 900, 1000, and 1100 series General Electric Dash 9's were all recently upgraded with the necessary PTC electrical equipment to become lead qualified out on the mainlines; Today's pictured 987 reaping such benefits.
Rock Me Mama Like a Wagon Wheel
7400' of double stacked, 53 foot domestics assigned to train Q CHISTO6 04L trade Chicago's bustling metropolis for the rural farmlands, wind turbines and grain elevators that dot the many miles of this bucolic Illinois landscape, seen here sprinting through small-town Ransom, milepost 79 of the Chillicothe Sub, still within the infant stages of their long, westward journey across the old Santa Fe Transcontinental to California. The front runner on this Sunday edition Chicago-Corwith to Stockton intermodal Q is C44-9W #987, which wears the short lived Heritage 1 livery from BNSF's original corporate image, conjured up following a September 1995 merger between both the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe and Burlington Northern railroads. This sharp looking H1 scheme features a large orange band running the length of each locomotive marked with company initials and flanked both above and below by thin yellow stripes and dark green paint, brought all together by BNSF's round "Wagon Wheel" logo adorned on the nose. Formerly relegated to trailing service only, the entire fleet of these 900, 1000, and 1100 series General Electric Dash 9's were all recently upgraded with the necessary PTC electrical equipment to become lead qualified out on the mainlines; Today's pictured 987 reaping such benefits.