View allAll Photos Tagged HotShots
CP 4443 is in charge of a 2-198 at Weaver West on a humid August 19th, 2018 morning approaching the west end of siding. I hated this rendition of the CP scheme with the giant space between the C and P, as if leaving space for a CA headlight package that wasn't there on these former SOO 4400's, as well as the hump service equipment on the roof. I couldn't care less, now, as this along with many others will probably never lead again out on the main without PTC.
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?
Hotshot NS 203 hustles South through Thomasville after midnight with a CN C40-8 leading the way South to Atlanta.
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.
BNSF M-EVESUM heads north for Sumas through some farmlands scenes on a gorgeous summer evening. 6-22-23
UP 1989 and 1983 count the ties slower and slower as they crawl behind a stopped intermodal on the Sunset Route. Even though it's a manifest, the train was a foamer hotshot.
4-6-25
Canon M50
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.
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.
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.
The Pennsy heritage unit leads 229, the hottest train that runs on the Atlanta North District, through Austell. 8-9-21
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.
Q234 screams into Casey, Illinois, with frames and boxcars of body panels for assembly plants in Michigan.
CPKC 181, the hotshot intermodal between San Luis Potosi and Bensenville established immediately after the merger, rolls through National Street in Elgin, Illinois behind a CP SD70ACU leading an ES44AC and a train of mostly Schneiders. In the distance is the Elgin Tower Building, the city's tallest building, which was built in 1929 immediately before the start of the Great Depression.
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)
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.
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.
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.
A LMX B39-8E leads a westbound intermodal on its first miles into a West Coast trip in 1997.
A few minutes earlier, the train left the former Santa Fe's Corwith yard and was hightailing it west.
CSX #7582 leads this southbound hotshot intermodal through downtown Folkston, GA on a cold February afternoon.
Scanned from 35mm negative.
"High Horsepower" four axles sprint eastward into the morning sun near Ft Madison, IA with hotshot trailers bound for Chicago.
It's business as usual as the ZLADV Denver Z runs on the LA&SL with its signature autoracks up front.
The Kootenay Valley Railway's only road train, the "Hotshot," crosses the Kootenay River west of Nelson, British Columbia on July 18, 2015. Because of the railway's schedule, cloudy weather is almost better when visiting the operation. Photo by Justin Franz.
CPKC’s new daily northbound intermodal, 181, seems to be seeing mild success, with the train I shot on 5/20 being all of 20 cars long with two KCSM GEVOs on the point
After siting in the siding for a meet with 234, NS hotshot 282 rolls through Hobart in a newly opened up angle. In google this used to be a road with a lot of brush and also shows the tracks almost inaccessible, to my luck recent construction and brush cutting opened up this spot nicely. This was shot with 4 Yongnuo YN560-iii's and 2 YN660's, would have been 5 YN560's but the fifth hit the pavement here.