The Illinois-Iowa Railfan

Hello everyone,

I never thought that I would have the chance to see UP 1996, the Southern Pacific Heritage unit, unless I visited California, its home territory. That was until my good buddy Eric told me that UP 1996 (SP), 1989(D&RGW) and 1988 (M-K-T) where headed for Chicago!! I could not believe what I was hearing, three of the six Heritage units where going to be in Chicago on one train! My family and I quickly made plans to head out, our goal: intercept the trio in Rochelle, Illinois and chase them east, toward Chicago. We arrived in Rochelle around 2:40 PM, shortly after arriving I get a call from my friend Eric, he tells me that 1988 just passed through Dixon, which is about 20 miles away, we chat for a few minutes and hang up.

Less than an hour later I hear the distinctive sound of 1988’s horn, we quickly get into place, seconds latter I see the large white star on the dark red nose of 1988, she’s traveling about 45 MPH as she passes the park. I shoot several photos and there gone. We decided to chase after them. They are on train MNPPR, the train is more that 9,000 feet long, the three big SD70ACe’s have no problem hauling the train up Creston Hill (many eastbound loaded coal trains stall on this hill as it is the steepest mainline grade on the Geneva Sub east of the Mississippi River) into the small town of Creston, by this point we are already ahead of them, we stop on the side of the road so we can shoot the trio as they crossed an open field, shoot a few photos of them and back into the car we get and take off once again, we got stuck in Creston, the trio beat us to the crossing, after the train passes we take off again, as we head east down IL 38 I can see that they are slowing down, the town of Malta is only a few miles ahead. About ¼ mile outside Malta they come to a complete stop, allowing for some nice detail shots of each unit, the crew was nice enough to pull the train ahead several hundred feet further after they see us trying to get photos of their train, where they originally stopped it was extremely hard to get photos due to the dense brush and steep embankment the tracks rest on, so we all appreciated them bringing the train out from the brush. After a 15-20 minute pause in Malta the engineer blows the horn, and waits for us to get ahead of him before he started moving. As the trio pulls out of Malta, a high-priority Z-train barrels past at about 65 MPH headed west. We again take off after them, this time we plan to catch them in De Kalb, IL, about 12 miles further east. I wanted to shoot the trio as they passed under the coaling tower. After waiting for about an hour 1988 finally makes an appearance, slowly passing through, this close to Chicago mainline traffic is very heavy, trains can get held up for hours in this region. At this time we decided to give up the chase, the sun was in such a bad place that it made photography almost impossible.

All this in one day and that does not include the 5-hour drive to Rochelle from home, so we had a very long and exciting day! It was awesome to see three of the Heritage units together on one train, something I will never forget!

Here is a larger version of my favorite photo of the trio, enjoy!

Andrew......you surely got the grab of the year....CONGRATS My Friend!!
GJ....Great LakesRailfan