Looking Down on BNSF—Savanna, Illinois, July 2017.

A long long time ago, back in the 1990s, I’d travel with Mike and Tom Danneman (and others) to the Mississippi River Valley to photograph the old Chicago, Burlington & Quincy route to the Twin Cities.

Among our favorite vantage points were river-side bluffs in the Mississippi Palisades State Park north of Savanna, Illinois.

The line on the east bank was Burlington Northern back then. Today it is BNSF Railway (reflecting the 1995 merger between Burlington Northern and Santa Fe).

On a bright afternoon in July, John Gruber and I returned to this old haunt and put ourselves in position to make a few photographs.

As hoped, BNSF operated several trains, and we exposed views from the tops of the bluffs. I made these with my FujiFilm X-T1.

Any favorites?

Looking timetable east toward Savanna.
You can hear eastbound whistle for a crossing a mile or so before they come into view.
A little glint off the river makes for nice atmosphere.
Is this train carrying  oil or ethanol? From this height I wasn’t sure.
Like many trains in the West, this unit tank train had a DPU at the back. (Distributed power unit, railroad lingo for a radio-controlled remotely operated locomotive).
A westward intermodal train races up-river toward the Twin Cities from Chicago. I remember when seeing a double stack train was a BIG deal.
Look an old fashioned car load train!

Tracking the Light posts daily!

 

 

2 comments on “Looking Down on BNSF—Savanna, Illinois, July 2017.

  1. The first one…gives a good flavor to where you are. The last
    shot would be the runner-up.

  2. Michael Walsh on said:

    That vertical picture, the “glint”, is superb. Breaks lots of “rules”, but the result is real drama.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

* Copy This Password *

* Type Or Paste Password Here *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>