I have lived in Minnesota most all of my life,but I have a real strong interest in Santa Fe. I suppose it came from seeing Santa Fe in those Lionel catalogs when I was a kid.That war bonnet livery got me hooked. I did not see a Santa Fe train until a summer vacation trip to California in 1954 at Cajon Pass. I told myself that I was going to ride a Santa Fe passenger train. That became many rides on the San Diegans while in the Navy but I did ride the El Capitan from Los Angeles to KC on a leave home.Flew home from KC on Braniff.
I would drive to Fort Madison Iowa to watch Santa Fe a couple of times. There was a question of who owned the bridge across the Mississippi. Santa Fe owned that bridge and charged a toll which I think was a dollar in 1984. I remember that the Santa Fe people were wonderful at Shopton and found it interesting a guy from Minnesota would drive from Minneapolis to watch Santa Fe. No one even thought of that BN and Santa Fe would become BNSF back then.
Have any of you had a simliar experience happen to you ?
Well, having to rule out anything that enters Chicagoland…
I would say the one that best fits that title for me is the Marquette Railway, operating over former CSX (C&O; Pere Marquette) trackage from Grand Rapids, Michigan, north to Ludington and Manistee. It runs through some lovely scenery, has an interesting fleet of freight cars (I could look at standing MQT cars for hours, trying to figure out all of their prior owners), and their one repainted locomotive and caboose carry reminiscences of both the Pere Marquette and the Monon in their paint scheme. The shade of blue doesn’t fit either railroad or CSX, but I like it! Their website suggests that they have a good attitude about both their customers and their employees.
CSX, even though I cross one of their lines every day on my way to work - they just don’t run very many trains on it any more.
CSX, by the way, is a favorite by extension from mergers - The C&O ran on the former Pere Marquette line to Flint, MI in my youth, so they garner a warm spot in my heart.
I live in east-central Minnesota but I’m from Wisconsin originally. I’d say as far as existing railroads are concerned, it’d have to be DME/ICE which I have to drive about 2.5 hrs. south to see but I’ve had pretty darn good luck with, and the WSOR which I’d have to drive 4+ hrs. to see.
The Wisconsin & Southern has been the toughest for me. Even when I lived in Wisconsin’s Fox River Valley I had the worst luck finding them outside their yards at Janesville or Horicon. I just never had any success at all getting a shot of the WSOR in operation “on the road” - I never seemed to be in the right place (unless I was looking for tracks trailing off to the horizon with nothing but sunglare on the rails - then I was always in the right spot).
Iowa Interstate for me. I used to live on their line and would see them a few times a week. Now I live an hour away and when I get a chance to get down in their area, it’s usually the wrong time of day to see them.
For me it’s worst. My favorite railroad is Canadian Pacific and I’m French. I went in Canada two years ago and I saw many CP trains. Since May 2007, I have never came back. I look at pictures of Canadian Pacific on differents websites. One day, I will go in British Columbia to see Kicking Horse Pass and Roger Pass. It’s my dream, but I must be patient.
I wish I could see more of the former MILW (now once again Canadian Pacific) Chicago-Kansas City line. I always used to watch that line while visiting my grandparents in Muscatine, Iowa - I’m too young to really remember the Milwaukee Road era (although I do remember when there was still the riverfront yard there and even after the tracks there were removed and the park went in, I remember seeing switchers in orange paint even after the SOO took over). But really, that was probably the first place where I really saw some good variety of cars/locomotives (where I am from, you pretty much just get NS locomotives and covered hoppers (and often the same ones because of the use of grain shuttle trains). Last time I was out there, I got a good view of the end of the independent DME/ICE - and thanks to living out east, I was able to get up early in teh morning when the line is really active (generally, you can see about 3 trains through there between about 6:00 am and 7:00 am)http://penncentral2002.rrpicturearchives.net/archivethumbs.aspx?id=32254&Page=1 - I’d really like to get back out there more often, especiallly to see what is goign on now that hte CP is running the line again.
Would like to see the Iowa Interstate some more - when my other grandmother lived in West Liberty, she lived only a couple of blocks by the old Rock Island depot - used to go by there and look for trains while visiting.
Probably the most interesting place I have ever been is the TRRA line in St Louis - lots of trains and a good amount of variety. Even being there for a conference and being tied up most of the day, I saw quite a bit there.
In general, I wish I could see more BNSF - they have a pretty wide variety of power and paint schemes running (at least from my limited exposure).