It is morning in Cassandra, Pennsylvania, as Amtrak’s eastbound Pennsylvanian rushes through on the Pittsburgh Line of host railroad Norfolk Southern.
The sunlight is nicely illuminating the fall foliage on the surrounding hillsides but has yet to fine the rails. This image was made on Oct. 17, 2007.
There was plenty of color in Cumberland, Maryland, on Oct. 23 when Amtrak’s Capitol Limited arrived en route to Washington.
No. 30 arrived on time with Phase I heritage locomotive No. 161 on the point. Behind it is colorful fall foliage on a nearby hillside.
The tracks here are owned by CSX but were once part of the Baltimore & Ohio mainline that hosted the original Capitol Limited between Chicago and Washington.
Photograph by Edward Ribinskas
Amtrak’s Chicago-bound Capitol Limited is only a couple of minutes or so behind schedule as it rushes through Chesterton, Indiana, on the Chicago Line of Norfolk Southern.
The P42DC is crossing the bridge over Coffee Creek and passing a stand of fall foliage.
No. 29 on this day had six cars rather than the customary five with the additional car being a transition sleeper. The train was reported on the Amtrak website to have arrived at Chicago Union Station on time at 8:45 a.m.
A pair of Amtrak P42DC locomotives are nose to nose in the motive power consist of the westbound Lake Shore Limited in Cleveland on Nov. 15, 1997. Both units were trailing in the three-locomotive consist. They’ve picked up some ice during their journey through upstate New York and along the Lake Erie shoreline between Buffalo and Cleveland.
Amtrak P42DC No. 128 catches some spring morning sunlight as it pushes Hiawatha Service Train 332 out of Sturtevant, Wisconsin, on May 20, 2006. Chicago-Milwaukee trains over the years have typically operated in push-pull service with a control cab on the south end and a locomotive on the north end. The train is on Canadian Pacific track once owned by the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific. The train’s consist is pure Horizon fleet.
To appreciate this image it probably helps if you grew up in a place with a lot of flat farmland.
Shown is Amtrak’s City of New Orleans racing northbound toward Chicago near Leverett, Illinois, shortly after sunrise on a Sunday morning.
No. 58 was more than an hour behind schedule leaving Champaign. The train is on the Chicago Subdivision of Canadian National, which at one time was the mainline of the Illinois Central between Chicago and New Orleans.
As for what I, an east central Illinois native, see in this photograph, I see familiarity. There are no striking physical features such as mountains and valleys, just farmland and in the distance traces of urbanization in Champaign-Urbana. Above the Superliner cars you also can see the top of the grain elevator at Leverett.
This is all familiar to me and in a way comforting.
I would not have been able to get this image had No. 58 been on time as it would have been dark as it passed through here. It was a nice way to get a day of railfanning off to a good start.
If you look closely, you will see there is frost on the crossties of the CN track. Temperatures were in the 20 when I made this photograph on a winter morning.
I later checked and determined No. 58 halted at Chicago Union Station 58 minutes late.
Amtrak’s Cardinal typically operates with one P42DC locomotive, three Amfleet II coaches, an Amfleet food service car, a Viewliner sleeper and Viewliner baggage-dorm.
But at least once a week it is used to ferry equipment from the Beech Grove shops to Chicago. The equipment being ferried is placed on the head end of No. 51 at Indianapolis Union Station and provides the appearance of two trains having been combined into one.
That was the case on Memorial Day this week when No. 51 passed through Brownsburg, an Indianapolis suburb, with one section consisting of two P42DC locomotives, two Viewliner baggage cars and a Superliner coach. The second section had the consist that No. 51 operated with from Washington to Indianapolis.
The train on this day was operating one hour, 50 minutes late out of Indianapolis.
Equipment bound for Beech Grove is ferried to Indianapolis in combination with Train 50 in the same manner.
Last Saturday’s weather forecast called for high temperatures in the 50s and mostly sunny skies so I ventured over to east central Illinois for my first railfan foray of 2021.
The day began, though, in heavy fog caused by a temperature inversion. When I arrived in Rantoul, Illinois, the temperatures were in the low 30s.
Those conditions wouldn’t last long, but while they did I was able to get this image of Amtrak’s northbound City of New Orleans cutting through the fog at the Rantoul station.
Although this is an Amtrak stop, the City is not scheduled to stop here. The train was operating as No. 1158 on a schedule 90 minutes than usual.
That was due to track work by host railroad Canadian Pacific in the South that has the northbound CONO running later than normal two days a week.
Back in 1999 Amtrak put together a tour train, the Celebrate the Century Express. It toured the United States to commemorate the U.S. Postal Service during the 20th century.
During a visit to Cumberland, Maryland, in October 1999 for a Carl Franz photo special, the train happened to be in town.
Carl arranged to have the train posed for a night photo (top image) on a bridge over the C&O canal with a full moon.
The next two images show the train as seen from the Western Maryland viaduct at Meyersdale, Pennsylvania, which is part of the former Western Maryland mainline converted to a hiking and biking trail.
The last image shows one of the stamps depicted the side of Amtrak P42DC No. 100.
Amtrak’s westbound Pennsylvanian is crossing over to the track closest to the boarding platform in Alliance, Ohio.
The image was made on May 16, 1999. The Pennsylvanian no longer operates west of Pittsburgh but Alliance continues to be served by Amtrak’s Chicago-Washington Capitol Limited.
Amtrak in the Heartland 