We were following railroad tracks up from Lafayette,Indiana came across these 2 yards
Homewood is Illinois Central’s main yard. Now part of Canadian National.
Blue Island I don’t know; sorry. I have seen videos about it on the PBS Trackside show but don’t remember who they said it belongs to.
I believe Blue Island is a yard for Indiana Harbor Belt.
Joe
Blue Island is the name for IHB’s yard, but this yard is actually located in the suburb of Riverdale (as is Barr Yard, owned by CSX). In the municipality of Blue Island, one will find Burr Oak Yard, a ghost of its incarnation as a Rock Island facility (now operated by Chicago Rail Link, I believe).
Blue Island has several. Downtown has the old ROck Island yard between the express and local mainlines to downtown. A portion of that is being run by Metra. Further south and running east and west is the B&OCT yard followed by the IHB Riverdale yard. All of which have a major crossing on the west side of town along with the Iowa Interstae who’s yard is located to the west of the crossing. At the crossing GTW also has/had a line (Now CN I guess) and Miwaukee ROad had a line. Don;t know who owns that now but a very busy location and in my mind better tha Dolton Junction because it is easier to get pictures there with sun angles and lack of wires in the way.
The one in Homewood is also home to the IC/CN Woodcrest shops, most known for being the shop responsible for scrapping dozens of WC SD45s, along with BC Rail GEs and ALCOs. Still, it is a great place to see a wide variety of power, you can find almost any type of IC, WC, GT, or CN engine there, plus DM&IR, B&LE, and also foreign power from other class ones can show up, plus the occasional visiting engine from about anywhere. The neat thing about Homewood is you never know what you are going to find there, but there usually is some good power. Blue Island has Burr Oak Yard, which is owned partly by IAIS and partly by Chicago Rail Link, which interchange at that yard. Metra also uses a small part of the yard to keep some trainsets for the weekends, and also for MOW equipment. Riverdale has IHB’s Blue Island yard and CSX’s Barr Yard, both of which are pretty big yards and both, especially the IHB yard, have quite a variety of power from many railroads.