The Illinois-Iowa Railfan

Hello fellow railfans!

The goal was 700, but heck, thats quite a few trains anyway! And if I truly counted everything I saw, that number would've been easily 700+++. The trip went great! Weather turned out great! I haven't really had too much time to analyze my results with school started and all but I got a little done. Definetely my favorite part of the trip was the paired BNSF, NS tracks in MO. It's such an incredible area, so much speed and variety! The extra UP trains they run makes this place that much better.

I got two 24 hour counts along that line. The first night, wed. aug 29th, was slow beyond belief - only 40 BNSF! ONLY 10 BNSF STACK TRAINS!! Crazy! But the 27 NS, 9 UP and 2 Amtrak made up for the slowness. 78 total is still more than I got here last year (by 1), but that was on a monday and with less UP's.

The second night was a lot better. On Friday, aug 31, I caught 97 Total! The 56 BNSFs I caught is pretty normal, maybe a little light. 26 NS trains was normal, I guess, but I expected more. The real treat was the 13 UPs I caught! I didn't think they were allowed to run that many, but what the heck! I loved it! 2 amtrak winds up the total.

I stayed in Princeville IL again the next night for another 24 hour count, but it didn't go all that well and I left a few hours early. The BNSF was pretty busy (I had 53 in 21 hours), actually, but the strange thing was the lack of UPs. I only saw 3 of them! Where were all the WB autos? That confused me. Maybe they were making up for the monster 13 of em they ran the day before.

As for the UP in Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, I still can't figure out how they can always be so backed up with trains. I stayed up all night in Carroll, expecting to get a 24 hour count, and traffic was moving pretty well, but I needed to keep moving west the next day in order to make it to kearney by night fall. But as I moved west, I passed lines of waiting EB's on the main line. That was totaly skewing my count, so I decided to bail, and head straight for kearney.

Kearney turned out pretty good actually. I got a 24 hour count that sunday night (aug 26), and I was surprised to catch 143 trains! of course most were coal - 79 to be exact - 33 Freight/Grain/potash, 22 Intermodal, 6 auto and 3 others (including the drgw heritage unit pulling a pass. special - don't know what that was about). Traffic was moving pretty well and that was nice.

Tuesday night was a little slower but not by much. I got about 130. For some reason though they were parking some trains in the middle track causing a little traffic jam. That was disapointing, but I did manage to catch some high-speed EB stacks. I only saw 16 intermodals that day.

I posted my videos on youtube. I'll just give you they link to my videos, so I don't have to rewrite the descriptions.
http://www.youtube.com/user/tylerwinks

My pictures didn't turn out as well as I hoped. When I find some time I'll get around to posting them. Iv'e been so busy!

Thanks for reading, and If any of you want some more information feel free to ask. I'd be glad to answer any questions!

Heres a few pics along the UP to begin with.

Some more UP action around Kearney.

More UP. Meets, meets, and more meets!

And more UP in NE.

Monday evening around kearney.

Monday Evening and the first pic from Odessa.

Odessa. Tuesday Evening.

Beautiful sunset in Odessa!

Beautiful! And a heck of a lot of coal trains!