View allAll Photos Tagged HotShots
With a friendly wave from the cab, Soo Line train 203 passes the shore of Pewaukee Lake at Pewaukee, Wisconsin, on the nice autumn day of October 6, 1990. An EMD SD60M/SD60 combo in new “candy apple red,” power the westbound hotshot.
Cruising through the community of Matfield Green, KS, a westbound BNSF "Z" train is making its way down the southern transcon on a mostly sunny Saturday, March 1, 2025 afternoon.
Hotshot NS 203 hustles South through Thomasville after midnight with a CN C40-8 leading the way South to Atlanta.
The Shasta Route crests the southern Cascades in Siskiyou County, California about a mile and a half east of Grass Lake siding. From there, eastbounds negotiate 22 miles of continual downgrade before they encounter level trackage on the floor of the Butte Valley at Mount Hebron. Having completed the descent, an LABRD flies through Mount Hebron on August 1, 1994. Since the train is about fifteen minutes behind Amtrak 14, it should have a swift trip to the crew change at Klamath Falls.
At the time, double stack traffic was fairly rare on the Shasta Route. My notes on the slide mount say that the symbol of this train was LABRD, which I would guess I discovered at the time from either radio traffic or a crew standing lineup message. I'm not sure what the "D" in LABRD signified, as it was typically used for detours or reroutes. Anyone?
Eastbound CSX hotshot Q296 pops out of Carothers Tunnel near Paw Paw, WV on April 22, 2001, led by C40-8 No. 7563.
The Pennsy heritage unit leads 229, the hottest train that runs on the Atlanta North District, through Austell. 8-9-21
An eastbound intermodal train that looks like the very hot LABRF (Los Angeles - BRooklyn Forwarder) climbs the grade through Cougar, California on a May evening in 1986.
If you look closely at the locomotives, there's a very rare (for the Oregon Division) GE sandwiched in the trio of tunnel motors.
This past week, i managed to delve into the medium format sides and negatives from Fred Bailey's treasure trove. For years he toted around a huge Pentax Ashai 6X7 Medium format. During his days living in the Charlestown, NH area, he was always in arm's length of many local operations including the Connecticut River Line which hosted many hotshot freights. B&M train CPSP, from Newport, VT south to the Conrail connection at Springfield, MA has just been re-crewed at Bridge St. Brattleboro, VT with B&M GP-7 1568 and GP-9's 1738-1726 with a tonnage train ready to tackle the grade over Mt. Hermon. Photo by Fred Bailey.
Hotshot train #971, has three burners from EMD------->>> ATSF3811,ATSF4027,ATSF3837, GP50,GP60,GP50. These geeps were used on the hottest of hot trains and put on a lot of miles bouncing back and forth from Chicago to west coast and back. This is Rock Creek Jct on the east side of the KC metroplex and hosted tons of variety in 1990. Scanned from a SFW negative.
Railfanning, on February 6th, 2026: (After Work Specials✅🚂️)
At CN Port Kells BC, MP’s108.15/106.0 CNR Yale Subdivision.
TRAIN 1: CN Train M35651-06 East (CN Mixed, Freight) CN (ES44) 2810, & Mid DPU CN (ES44/CITI) 3921. Axle count 628. (Length 9,854ft) (154 cars, mix bag) (At 3:50PM) (North Track) (Noice K5HL!) (50mph!)
TRAIN 2: VIA Train P00251-06 East (The Canadian, Passenger) VIA (F40) 6451, & VIA (F40) 6459. Axle count 56. (Length 1,400ft) (12 coaches) (At 4:30PM) (North Track) (60mph!)
Another of the many reasons I'm grateful for my innumerable blessings.
( I can't count them, because there are so many ! )
Over Lake Emerald, in Oakland Park, Florida -US- near Fort Lauderdale.
Shot from my balcony, early Saturday evening, December 1, 2007.
LARGER VIEW is really a "MUST See."
See WHERE THIS WAS TAKEN. ( When map appears, click "Hybrid" and "+" sign for best map view.)
SOO 6001 and MILW 203 hustle through Sparta with eastbound COFC on train 208 early in the morning on September 24, 1987. A couple years earlier these Shoreham-St. Luc containers would have been traversing northern WI and the Upper Peninsula on trains 909/910. While I understood the rerouting of the Schiller Park-St. Luc traffic I always had problems coming to terms with the Shoreham stuff going through Chicago. It added about as much distance to the Shoreham-St. Luc trip as the SOO saved on the rerouting of the Schiller-St. Luc stuff through the Lower Peninsula. A rescan from 3 years ago.
In the era of PTC sometimes you just have to include those ugly antennas in your shot and cut off the top of them. A stack train bound for Atlanta wastes no time zipping by the control point at East Brandon.
BNSF M-EVESUM heads north for Sumas through some farmlands scenes on a gorgeous summer evening. 6-22-23
Southbound Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac hotshot No. 109 (Potomac Yard-Waycross) crests the grade and passes under the classic wooden overhead bridge at Hunton, VA on Sept. 10, 1983, led by GP35 No. 133. This wooden overhead bridge was one of three left at the time this was shot, the other two being at Coleman's Mill and Lorton. This would be replaced with a modern concrete bridge within a couple years. Shortly thereafter, the one at Coleman's Mill would meet the same fate. The one at Lorton lasted into the 2000's, when it was eliminated.
CSX Intermodal I032-17 is headed out of Savannah GA at big hill road with amazing light. This train had just started to get going after catching a hotbox defect.
A westbound pig train approaches Yucca, Arizona at midday in June 1988. Sometimes, you would just pull over when you saw the headlight in the distance, and hope for the best.
Late in the day on a cool Sunday, March 30, 2025 afternoon, a westbound BNSF "Z" intermodal train heads out of Neosho, MO on the Cherokee Subdivision.
The “Race That Stops a Nation” didn’t stop Pacific National's "Hotshot" single-deck intermodal 2SP7 from Sydney to Perth seen skirting the shores of Menindee Lakes led by NR10-NR117 on Melbourne Cup Day, 4 November, 2025.
(25W.10498_PN_NR10-117_2SP7_LakesWt)
Wisconsin Central train T218 was blasting southward behind a matched set of SD45s on a warm and sunny afternoon in the Chicagoland suburbs in 1999.
This hot train from Green Bay kept a lot of Scheider trailers off of Interstate 94 until Canadian National came along and pissed away this traffic.
Recent Studio shoot, edited using a combination of Lightroom and Photoshop CS6.
Single strobe, with fitted soft box slightly to right of the model and elevated.
Model - Dee Dixon
Hair Stylist - Steph O'neill freelance hair stylist
Please check out my other images and feel free to comment, many thanks
One of the hottest trains on Conrail's River Line was TVLA. It handled a solid TOFC consist from North Bergen, NJ to Los Angeles, CA via a connection with the Santa Fe at Corwith Yard in Chicago (where it became QNYLA). TVLA was scheduled to depart North Bergen at 7:30am and usually did so on time. In the spring and summer months it was possible get a bit of sun on the nose in places as the train headed north. TVLA is seen here motoring through CP7 in Bogota at 8:00am on the nose, laying down a hazy trail of exhaust in the process. No doubt the River Line dispatcher was working to keep the train moving along at track speed. 3-4 four-axle units was the norm on TVLA in the early 90s.
Conrail TVLA:
CR 3323 GP40-2
CR 5072 B40-8
CR 5061 B40-8
Everyone seemed to enjoy my other Ashland post, so lets roll with another one this fine Thursday evening. Beginning in November, the RF&P is a busy place as a mainstay on CSX's I-95 corridor. The addition of 2-3 hotshot intermodal trains per day, mixed in with Amtrak and regular traffic, makes this the place to be for train watching in Virginia. After cooling their heels in a siding for a few holiday extras, low-priority coal drag F742 rolls through Ashland, Virginia in gorgeous late afternoon lighting. With a lot of traffic for the 2 mains, the BD Desk was getting a workout juggling all the traffic.
CSX #7582 leads this southbound hotshot intermodal through downtown Folkston, GA on a cold February afternoon.
Scanned from 35mm negative.
It's business as usual as the ZLADV Denver Z runs on the LA&SL with its signature autoracks up front.