Though Coal provides for millions of tons of loading on our class One railroads each year, we seldom think of the role railroads play in bringing that coal above ground. Here at the Sunnyside Coal... (more)

Railway and four lanes of interstate 90--and the South Fork of the Coeur d-Alene River--share the narrow canyon west of Mullan in the Bitterroot Mountains, where a short westbound Kellogg Local dr... (more)

Small-town life in the tiny town of Mullan Idaho goes on uninterrupted as a pair of GP38-2's bring a short train of silver ore down the 3% grade from Lucky Friday mine, en route to Kellogg and eve... (more)

Technically leased from Joe Simon & Sons metals, former Burlington Northern F7A's 704/610--originally Great Northern sisters--switch the car barge apron at Port Townsend, Washington, amid dry-dock... (more)

Former Great Northern F45 6601 leads two SD45's on a westbound manifest curving along the Columbia River a few miles east of Wenatchee, Washington, approaching the siding of Malaga on a summer aft... (more)

Not long after leaving Spokane, eastbound Kellogg Local takes to a narrow ledge while climbing 2% Mica Hill, gaining acccess to the rolling hills of the Palouse. Fifteen empties follow GP38-2 2058... (more)

UP's eastbound Kellogg Local skirts the shoreline of Lake Coeur d'Alene, just south of Harrison, Idaho, moments after leaving the causeway and drawbridge across Lake Chacolet. This branch is in it... (more)

An unsung victim of the BNSF merger of 1996, historic pioneer Northern Pacific locomotive "Minnetonka" sits on the cement floor of a parking garage at the BN headquarters campus in Fort Worth soon... (more)

DIPPIN' TIME: There's not much for this train crew to do while waiting for an eastbound on short time to show up, so the engineer of the Houston-Denver "Q" train loads up"just a pinch between chee... (more)

A small cumulus cloud catches the last rays of a dying day as a westbound Burlington Northern coal empty heads into the darkness, somewhere between Clayton and Des Moines, New Mexico.

Train #196 clatters across the Santa Fe interlocking in Saginaw, just north of Fort Worth, behind an ex-SLSF B30-7 and two GP50s. Merger with that Santa Fe is only 50 weeks away.

My first steps in Texas--en route moving to the Lone Star State from the Northwest--were to photograph this state line marker and resting BN SD70MAC awaiting an outbound crew on a westbound coal e... (more)

A trio of "Grinsteins" roll a UFIX empty west on the former Fort Worth & Denver across bushy Creek, near Alvord, Texas.

A colloquialism in Texas for a heavy rainstorm is a "toad strangler," and that's what we're seeing here as the normally nearly-dry Red River is boiling red with Oklahoma silt as a westbound BN fre... (more)

Second-trip tower operator Roy Head hands up a train list to a southbound train departing Sherman, Texas, and crossing the diamond with the former Missouri Pacific, seen from the last operating in... (more)