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NS 21D with the Interstate Heritage Unit on Point clears Ladson Road grade crossing at Charleston, SC.
On the way home to Ohio from Virginia I came upon this westbound empty hopper train east of Charleston, WVa, pulled off the side of the interstate and found a pleasing location not losing more than 2 minutes in drive time.
All three paint schemes applied to Iowa Interstate's ES44AC's are represented on BICB-05 crossing the Mississippi River on April 6, 2022.
The Santa Fe–Southern Pacific merger was an attempted corporate consolidation of two of the major railroads in the Western United States at the time: the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and the Southern Pacific Railroad. The approximately US$5 billion deal was announced in September 1983 and in December 1983, both companies were acquired by a new holding company, the Santa Fe Southern Pacific Corporation Both companies' extensive non-railroad related assets were immediately combined. However, the Southern Pacific Railroad remained in a voting trust and the railroads continued to be operated independently and competitively while the merger worked through the regulatory process.
In March 1984, the companies asked the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) for approval to merge their railroads. Confident the deal would be approved, the company began repainting their locomotives into a new unified paint scheme that would allow the future railroad to be called SPSF.
I July of 1986 the ICC denied the merger and gave the companies two years to split assets.
Five years after the failed attempt I'm in a dry dusty barren landscape on the outer edge of the 40 Mile Desert in the ghost town of Hazen, Nevada. The ghost of SPSF lives on in the form of the "Kodachrome" paint scheme applied to two of the EMD's in this consist.
Both railroads would seek merger alternatives in the near future. Southern Pacific with the Denver, Rio Grande & Western, and Santa Fe with the Burlington Northern.
Thank WikiP for an easier caption than I could do mysylf.
This is Crazy Peak (yes, that's its name). I shot this early today along I-90, near Big Timber, Montana.
Interstate 90 (I-90) is a transcontinental freeway, and the longest Interstate Highway in the United States at 4,861.09 km. Its western terminus is in Seattle, and its eastern terminus is in Boston, at Route 1A near Logan International Airport. There is no point worth mentioning between Vantage Bridge and Spokane, which it enters 229 km later.
Interstate 5 heading South towards Seattle. You can see the lights of the downtown in the background.
Interstate 17 is a north–south Interstate Highway located entirely within the U.S. state of Arizona. I-17 has the unusual distinction of starting at approximately milepost 194 instead of at milepost zero. This is a holdover from Arizona's old system of marking mileposts, where a branching route would continue the milepost numbering of its original host, instead of starting over at zero.
Hurley, Wisconsin/Ironwood, Michigan Border
For best view left click on the photo and see it better.
Thank you for your kind views, comments, awards and faves.
In July, while driving from Richmond, VA, to Boston, we skirted NYC and drove up the west side of the Hudson River.
We drove through Palisades Interstate Park. The views of were wonderful.
This is the view looking south from State Line Lookout. It is located by Point Lookout, the highest point on the Palisades Cliffs (520 ft. above the river).
Point Lookout is in New Jersey, only about 1/2 mile south of the New York state line.
Exotic debris, piled up at Paul's Junkyard, site of my upcoming night photography and light painting workshop. A totally unique experience in the photography workshop universe, day or night.
Night, 4 minute exposure. Full moon, lime-gelled and natural LED flashlight.
Reprocessed and replaced, March 2024.
NS Southbound Steel Train 60C passes through Keener, AL. with the Interstate Heritage ES44AC NS 8105 leading the way.
Interstate 70 begins at an interchange with Interstate 15 near Cove Fort. Heading east, I-70 crosses between the Tushar and Pahvant ranges via Clear Creek Canyon and descends into the Sevier Valley where I-70 serves Richfield, the only town of more than a few hundred people along I-70's path in Utah. Upon leaving the valley near Salina I-70 crosses 7,923 ft (2,415 m) Salina Summit and then crosses a massive geologic formation called the San Rafael Swell.
Prior to I-70's construction the swell was relatively undiscovered and inaccessible via paved roads. Once this 108 mi (174 km) section was opened to traffic in 1970, it became the longest stretch of Interstate Highway with no services and the first highway in the U.S. built over a completely new route since the Alaska Highway.[3] It also became the longest piece of interstate highway to be opened at one time. [4] Although opened in 1970, this section was not formally complete until 1990 when a second steel arch bridge spanning Eagle Canyon was opened to traffic.
Since I-70's construction the swell has been discovered for its desolate beauty. The swell has since been nominated for National Park and/or National Monument status on multiple occasions. If the swell is granted this status it arguably would be the first time a National Park owes its existence to an Interstate Highway. Most of the exits in this span are view areas, brake check areas, and Runaway truck ramps with few traditional freeway exits.
I-70 exits the swell near Green River. From Green River to the Colorado state line I-70 follows the southern edge of the Book Cliffs.
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The Interstate Railroad Heritage Unit (not one of my favorites, to be honest) leads its train across Illinois Route 3 on the east approach of the Terminal Railroad Association's Merchants Bridge, having just crossed the Mississippi River from Missouri.
"blue camas basket" sculpture, on the southern end of the Whilamut Passage bridge over the Willamette River on I-5 at Eugene, Oregon - along with some light trails from a northbound semi ...
Cincinnati, OH. July 10, 2019. Shot on a Pentax 67II and Kodak Portra 800. Developed and scanned by The Darkroom.
Pacific Interstate has changed his name into Majestic Air in 1988 and has been joined Carnival Airlines 1 year later... Still the only aircraft used by this airline taken in December 1988 by an unknown photographer at an unknown location
There's a lot going on in this shot. Let's start with the small, yellow craft docked alongside the ore boat, J.L. Mauthe. That little yellow boat is the Marine Trader that was built in Superior, Wisconsin in 1939 with hull number 238999. The boat was originally 50 feet 7 inches long but was lengthened 10 feet in 1965. It sported many different paint jobs and color schemes over the years and was available day or night to help keep sailors supplied with nearly anything they wanted to buy. It was a floating ship's store, if not a mini-department store. The craft worked throughout the Duluth-Superior harbor for the first 66 years it was operational. As I understand it, owners Franz and Bruce VonRiedel owned this craft and two others, Marine Supplier and Kaner I, that were owned previously by Al and Bernie Kaner, respectively. All three boats were mothballed for a time when VonRiedel's business—Acme Marine Services—was closed in 2000. The boats were eventually sold to different parties between 2000 and 2005. The Marine Trader left the Ports for good in October 2005 and that was apparently the first time the craft ever sailed across Lake Superior for points east. If you would like to do more research on the Trader and see more pictures too then please visit www.boatnerd.com/ for lots more material on this—and every other vessel on the Great Lakes.
Next, if we look closely we'll see a sailor about to embark on a personal shopping expedition. He's climbing down the ladder to Marine Trader from the working deck of the Mauthe. Then, just beyond him are half a dozen men actively engaged in loading natural ore into the Mauthe's hold. Deck hatches are wide open and spouts from Missabe Dock 5 will be lowered and raised in concert by men on top of the dock who will operate those chutes one or two at a time. Then in turn, corresponding ore pocket doors will be opened to allow the staged iron ore to slide right into the big boat with a loud, almost-prehistoric "whooshing" sound.
Then, pay careful attention to the ore cars on top of Dock 5. This will take considerable explanation.
Each ore dock in Duluth and Superior (Two Harbors and Ashland too) was much more than a staging area where ore was simply dumped into the dock. The ore was actually partially blended in each dock pocket. Then when the ore was dumped into a boat it was further blended as it was directed into the near, middle, or far side of each hold. This wasn't simply a matter of blending different iron content either. Individual vessel size and that vessel's loading characteristics played into it nearly as much as both the iron and silica content of that ore.
Silica content was especially important during unloading of the ore dock as ore with higher silica ran faster out of the dock pockets and allowed for more precise loading to the far side of the vessel. By adjusting the angle of the chutes this fast running ore would slide out of the pocket faster and thereby reach the far side of the vessel to make the loading much more even.
While each pocket on Dock 5 held four car loads of ore, dumping into these pockets was not an even-steven kind of operation. Each ore dock had four tracks on top of it. Two tracks fed the pockets on the north side of the dock while the second pair of tracks fed the south side pockets. So each side of the dock had just two tracks used to fill the pockets, that were in turn used to load vessels on opposite sides of the ore dock. Fast running ores and slow running ores each had their own dumping order with 3/4 of the ore going into each pocket via the two inner tracks. The two outer tracks were used to top of the load or to put stickier ore on top of the fast running ore so that it would slide right out behind the fast ore. If the sticky ore went in first, then the load might not release at all.
So during the modern era of blended ores 75% of the dock was filled via the two inner tracks while just 25% was dumped from the two outer tracks. The whole idea was to make each 4-car load in each pocket to be both a proper chemical content and also the most-free-running consistency to make dock unloading quick and easy. Filling a boat necessitated moving the vessel during loading. Deck hatches were generally spaced for every 2nd or 3rd pocket and chute. So a vessel might make 3 or more passes back and forth to get all of the ore contained in the dock for a given load, from a series of 3-4 adjacent pockets. On a good day things went like this but on a bad day when the ore being dumped was sticky or had a high moisture content then the work was much more difficult. You can read about that here: www.flickr.com/photos/jeff_lemke/29092814325/in/album-721...
There are a couple more things worth pointing out from this shot too. Notice how both tracks above the pockets have many more ore cars parked there. Those loads aren't for the next vessel. They are for this vessel. After each pocket is emptied of its contents the final phases of loading this boat will occur. That will be what they called "speed loading" or "topping off" the load that's already inside of the boat. Ore inside of those cars will be dumped directly into the boat through the pocket while the gate is open and the cute is lowered. The ore will fall directly from the car into the boat. Getting the last bit of ore into each boat in this manner became necessary as the boats became larger and sometimes as loads became stickier and harder to dump. Railroads found that the sticky ores became much more sticky when left in the dock for any time and as each car was dumped on top of the previous load, the problem became even worse.
Other times the pockets simply didn't hold enough ore to satisfy the larger holds in those boats. This was true in the taconite era too. I was invited to ride along on just such a train in Superior at Allouez Dock 2 where we were loading pellets directly from the cars through the pockets to top off a load of taconite. The larger BN Dock 5 at Allouez brought about an end to this practice and the balance of Allouez ore docks were abandoned after Dock 5 was up and running at full capacity.
The last thing that I'll mention is the second track in. Take a close look the the two cars farthest right on top of the dock. The black one is a Northern Pacific car while the ones next to it are Great Northern. This load will include interchange ore that was brought to Saunders, Wisconsin by the Burlington Northern. The Missabe's Interstate Job picked up that ore at Saunders then brought it to Proctor via Adolph, sorted it at Proctor, then the Hill Job brought it down for spotting on Missabe Dock 5. All of the ore roads that ran here cooperated to provide each other with the necessary ore to make a boat load the proper and required chemical consistency to fulfill orders from the steel companies. A large amount of ore loaded into the these massive docks actually came here from the non-owning roads. It was this interchange between the railroads of the various ores (that would then be sorted before being loaded into the docks) that really made the whole system work. Without this ore interchange between the various railroads the mining companies would have been limited to shipping in many cases, unusable or unwanted grades of ore. Without the interchange of ore cars that allowed better grades of ore to be created through yard sorting and dock and hull blending—the ore era as we once knew it would have ended decades earlier than it did.
Of course, way back when, when the ore docks were still very young and made mostly of wood, it was possible to load ore willy-nilly because the earliest ores mined were of a sufficiently high iron content that blending wasn't required or desired. But as those better-resources played out, the operation that I described here today is what quickly became the norm. It is the reason why railroads like the Missabe and Great Northern had such huge sorting yards at Proctor and Allouez. They had to be massive because the mix of cars needing to go down to any one track on the docks became a staggeringly complex project that changed by season. Every year there was a different supply of ores to blend.
It should be obvious by now that if you thought that the iron ore used to make steel went straight from the mine to the dock in solid strings of cars—generally speaking you'd be wrong about that. But as natural or direct shipping ores played out and taconite was developed during the mid-1960s, the dream of being able to load an entire train load of Minnesota ore into a Great Lakes vessel finally became a reality through the advent of the taconite pellet—though even that started out rather slowly. Believe it or not many boats ran with split loads containing half natural iron ore and half taconite pellets. That was until the pellet plants could produce enough pellets to load full vessels. Each taconite plant produced its own variety of product too. Ultimately, taconite production turned a difficult sorting and blending process into a relatively easy one by creating an easily transportable product with a consistent iron content.
After 1968, scenes like this one began to become more rare every day. By the time this shot was taken in 1981 natural ore shipments out of Duluth were practically a thing of the past. Just to contrast complex vs. simple processes, here's a nice view of the Duluth docks that I shot in the post-natural-ore taconite era where we can see two varieties of pellets on the ground that still fill boat holds in present day Duluth: www.flickr.com/photos/jeff_lemke/25449237413/in/album-721...
Of course if you visit either of the Twin Ports area "ore yards" today (that's BNSF's Allouez and CN's Proctor facilities) you'll find that those once-huge ore classification yards are truly conspicuous by their complete absence (Allouez) or nearly complete absence (Proctor). In the taconite era, railroad tracks simply store cars not being used at the moment. There's nothing much left to blend because other than the iron particles themselves that are mated with a binding clay and limestone to make the pellets in the first place—all that's left to do is dump them onto the ground for stockpile and then reload them into the dock when the boat gets near.
While the days of sorting ore are likely gone forever it sure is fun remembering just how complicated that process was and how many men and women earned their livings doing this important work for America. I'm glad that I found this picture of Duluth-Superior's most-recognized bumboat to share with you today. That little floating store provided the guys on the bigger boats with an opportunity to do something besides the everyday grind. The requisite climb up and down the ladder to be able to spend a little money had to be worth it, and I'm certain that when the Marine Trader pulled up alongside the ore boats it was truly a welcome sight for sore eyes. Long live the bumboats and their Captains!
This was taken off of one of only two exits along the six mile stretch of this bypass interstate in Ohio. I-470 serves as a bypass of downtown Wheeling, WV and is the only three digit interstate that runs through West Virginia.
View across Queens with the 'Calvary Cemetery' and the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway (Interstate I-278) with the 'Kosciuszko Bridge'
On right bottom 'Sunnyside Yard'
Blick über Queens mit dem Friedhof 'Calvary Cemetery und dem Brooklyn–Queens Expressway (Interstate I-278) mit der Brücke 'Kosciuszko Bridge'
Unten rechts der Abstellbahnhof 'Sunnyside Yard'
AA3350 Toronto Pearson International (YYZ) - New York City LaGuardia (LGA)
04.10.2019
Envoy/ American Eagle Embraer ERJ-145 N851AE
DSC04393