Westbound, then? Reason I asked is that Saturday afternoon, while traveling down the Mississippi on the Wisconsin side, I caught a northbound mixed manifest that looked almost identical to that one- had a couple of flats with yellow construction equipment on it near the front. Must have been a different one, though.
Your second shot looks like a manifest freight that left Eola yard in Aurora, IL on Saturday at about 1:00 p.m. Those look like Catepillar pieces of equipment and they routinely leave Eola on a MSP freight (the Catepillar plant is here in Aurora). Did you happen to see this freight late Saturday afternoon so it may have had time to get from Eola to your neck of the woods?
I betcha that’s the one I saw, Jim. It was northbound near Fountain City around 3:30 PM, two foreward-facing widecabs up front. Unfortunately I was southbound on Highway 35 at the time, so I didn’t get a chance at a picture.
I don’t think any train could leave Eola yard at 1PM and cross most of Illinois and all of Iowa and be in eastern Nebraska the same day, at least in daylight hours. Correct me if I am wrong, please.
That manifest looks like the GAL LIN but not sure. Most of the cat stuff winds up being switched in at galesburg so no real trains from chicago run straight through to lincoln, unless its the Q CHIDEN or of course the Z.
Very nice shots btw. Is the double track project going well out that way? We havent heard much off the Neb Div in a while.
No not realy. West Oreapolis to East Cullom is still Single Track. The new Second Main should start going in sometime early in 2007. Main two will run from East Ashland to the West siding switch Southbend. One Railfan I was told said that the BNSF wants to Double Track all the way to the Missiouri bridge at Plattsmouth.
Thanks for sharing your pictures with us, I enjoyed looking at them.
In the future, though, I have this teensy bit of constructive criticism that I would like you, and a whole lot of other contributors to the Trains Magazine website, to take to heart.
When you mention a station or a geographic place, please include the name of the state at which its located. “Oreapolis” by itself isn’t very helpful, but “Oreapolis, Nebr. on the BNSF/Amtrak Creston, Iowa line” would be a lot more meaningful.
On a secondary note, after doing some research I discovered that Oreapolis is the junction between
the BNSF Lincoln - Ashland, Nebr. - Oreapolis freight main, a line which crosses the Missouri River nearby and subsequently splits at Pacific Jct., Iowa with additional routes to Chicago and Kansas City, and
the Ashland - Omaha - Gibson Yard - Oreapolis secondary.
The Union Pacific’s Falls City line (nee MoPac) connecting Omaha and Kansas City crosses the BNSF here as well.
The URL appearing below pretty well illustrates this idea.
Well I hope they get a move on lol means more trains off the Ottumwa Sub for us. I can see the Creston and Chicago Pools getting a lot bigger if we can get more coal trains moved across that bottleneck. Also might make the Chief DS calm down when he sees his Z trains making better time.
