Liam Connolly Roadfreight
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The Buffalo and Pittsburgh’s daily Riker (RI) to Salamanca (SI) roadfreight (RISI) is northbound through the clarion river gorge at Portland Mills, PA. Today’s train has the former QNSL, now WCOR 307 leading 2 more SD40-2’s and also an SD50-3. They’ll swap crews at Johnsonburg before returning south to their home terminal.
Photo Taken in The Lewis Pass 2004 on my way home from Nelson.
Scanned photo sorry about the quality
The lowest and the most grand meet at Maryhill, Washington on a summer afternoon. At left is BN 672, a long distance roadfreight. It originated in Klamath Falls, Oregon and terminated at Pasco. In deference to the hand throw switches on the Oregon Trunk, it carried a manned caboose, The piggyback in front of the caboose came from the circus ramp that BN had at its South Klamath Yard.
The train at right is BN 13, a very hot intermodal running from Chicago to Portland. It was a nice train to chase down the Columbia River Gorge, as it reliably operated in the later afternoon and usually had BN's most "in vogue" power. You have to feel for the crew getting beaten up by the ride quality of that four year old LMX GE.
One of the more distinctive features of Northern Pacific's mainline between Portland and Seattle was the triple searchlight signals that were employed at interlockings along the line. This set at the north end of the depot platform in Vancouver, Washington was a favorite. I can't decide what is more difficult to take - the loss of these signals to progress several years ago, or the fact that Portland & Western runs to "The Couve."
Back in July 2009, PNWR's 663 job heads for the Columbia River Drawbridge with a healthy train on the drawbar. In Burlington Northern days, the roadfreight to Albany on the Oregon Electric was BN's 663 train. Today, PNWR carries on the traditional name.
BNSF B40-8 588 (originally Santa Fe 7439) heads up local roadfreight L-CHI101 near Williamsfield, Illinois on the Chillicothe Sub, on some dreary-ass cloudy afternoon back in 2015.
Steam tank engine 1450 crosses the River Severn on the Bridgnorth Bypass. The locomotive is pictured heading back to the Severn Valley Railway by lorry. The 14xx Class engine had been on loan to the Epping Ongar Railway and was on its way to Bridgnorth, late afternoon on Tuesday June 9th 2015.
1450 is quite close to "home" here. Immediately to the left of this picture, and out of view, is the Severn Valley line and the railway's Bridge 35, a green steel structure which crosses the A458 bypass just south of Bridgnorth station. To the right of the picture is the River Severn.
GNRR 4125 heads south through the marble plant at Nelson, GA with the normal Friday roadfreight to Elizabeth. Change is afoot as evidenced by the trailing Patriot Rail GP38s, I had photographed the 4125 at this spot before but I knew this would be the last. 4125 along with all but one 567 powered unit has been sidelined and the railroad plans to standardize on a all GP38 fleet.
Columbia Day 1998 was a pretty standard weekend trackside on Canadian American's Moosehead Subdivision across Maine. You had your roadfreights, intermodal trains and GO Transit commuter trains led by Amtrak FL9s... Wait, what? In October 1998, Iron Road Railways operated a series of weekend excursions on CDAC and the Bangor & Aroostook with a pair of leased Amtrak FL9s and some GO Transit double decker commuter cars that were being stored on the railroad at the time. Weird occurrences like this are what made railfanning the B&A so much fun back in the Iron Road era. Here, one of the excursions crosses the Kennebec River west of Greenville, Maine.
TK RoadFreight's Scania Y21TKR is pictured departing Beamish with the 'Scarborough Daily Tours' liveried replica Albion BF9887 which had been taking part in their 'Fares Please!' event on May 8th 2023.
The Oregon Trunk has always been a really exotic place to railfan. Jointly owned by BNSF and Union Pacific today, it travels through the scenic Deschutes River Canyon. From the early 80s into the mid 90s, it was a time capsule of 1970s railroading - just about all trains had SD40-2s for power, and manned cabooses at the rear. The searchlight signals used for its ABS system then gave it the appearance of being a big time mainline, even though it was a secondary mainline with nominal traffic.
Traffic on the line then consisted of a Burlington Northern roadfreight between Pasco, Washington and Klamath Falls, Oregon; a second BN roadfreight between Vancouver, Washington and Klamath Falls; a BN local that worked north from Bend to Madras; and a tri-weekly UP local from The Dalles, Oregon to Bend, which ran south Monday - Wednesday - Friday and returned the following day.
Many changes have taken place since the BNSF merger. Today, the entire line has been converted to CTC. The track has been upgraded with welded rail and concrete ties in many places. UP no longer runs on the Trunk, although they gained trackage rights on the former Great Northern line south of Bend in the merger.
These are shots of a half hour I spent at a famous spot near Sherar where the Oregon Trunk crosses the Deschutes River, goes through at tunnel, and then immediately crosses the river again. We saw the H BAKPAS pass northbound. It met an H VAWBAK1 at Oakbrook siding, a few miles downstream. We caught the latter train as it rolled south.
In this image, the northbound BAKPAS is crossing the Deschutes River.
'TarmacBob' posted a photo a few days ago of AE Jenkins B7MVT, a T45 Leyland Roadtrain 6x2 taken at Brands Hatch earlier this year. Here's very similar B712MVT seen mixing it with a TNT Roadfreight Volvo F12 at the same circuit 30years earlier.
It's been nearly a month since BNSF did away with the long lasting St. Cloud local and replaced it with the Northtown based Hinckley local (as far as Big Lake if you're really lucky).
Anyway, these days cars are swapped at the Becker siding. Roadfreights drop cars for St. Cloud and pick up cars for Northtown and Dilworth, the St. Cloud roadswitch does the opposite, dropping cars for Northtown and picking up for St. Cloud.
Not shown is a massive collection of cars that have been spotted on the siding, to the point that the siding is almost overfilled.
Here though, the Roadswitch makes it's delivery to Becker, and will drop the cars in the east end of the siding before going over to the west end to pick up a string of cars to go back, it's a neat operation in actuality.
I didn't think I'd be so happy to see geeps again! I miss that local lol, but I could get used to this.