Rather than venture to the unknown and drive to Homewood as planned, I did mostly the “tried and true” and drove to Rochelle today about mid-day, but while there about an hour I saw only three trains so I decided to be a little adventurous and drove to Mendota. When I arrived at Mendota I saw a BNSF eastbound coal train with two SD70ACE units up front and a SD70MAC DPU unit pushing come screaming past the Amtrak station just before the westbound Amtrak #3 came into town for about a one minute station stop. I then drove a little east of downtown to watch the Loram railgrinder working some of the main line there. I then followed the coal drag along Illinois Rt. 34 almost to Aurora and at times paced him doing about 60 per!
All in all a relaxing afternoon of watching and pacing trains!