Improbably, during Downers Grove's Heritage Festival (the local annual four-day carnival, which draws lots of small children), BNSF has removed the chain-link fence between #1 and #2 track. In a b... (more)

Take a moment to compare the spacious control console of Metra 408, a young MP36PH-3S, to that of a modern 8500 series control car.

As the sun sets on the afternoon of December 21, 2004, lighting up the sky beautifully, the silhouette of the westbound signal bridge controlling Highlands interlocking symbolizes its future, as B... (more)

Amtrak P42 31, wearing the now extinct Phase III color scheme and showing a little bit of wear and tear, pauses in Naperville on a beautiful summer afternoon.

Metra F40PHM-2 number 193 departs Clarendon Hills, not quite headed Everywhere West. Scanned from ISO 400 print film.

The air doors of Metra coach 740 close, activated by a trainman in another car. The days of this 1950 Budd Company alumnus, assembled by Shotwelding and once a proud bearer of the Chicago, Burling... (more)

An unimportant set of light power, headed for Eola Yard, rolls through Downers Grove on a July afternoon in 2004.

Metra F40C 611, once an endangered species and now protected, shoves train 2250 east from Elgin. Revived to power an accident recreation train nearly two years la... (more)

Only a few days after Thanksgiving, the Christmas wreaths are out in force in Downers Grove. MP36 405 poses here with its train at the Main Street depot. Scanned from ISO 400 print film.

At the conclusion of a day in La Grange, Metra 189 rolls into the depot. Scanned from ISO 400 print film.

Somehow, a business car found itself attached to this container train. Scanned from ISO 400 print film.

On a cold and foggy November evening, locomotive 424 poses just long enough for a three-second exposure here in the Roselle depot parking lot. Scanned from ISO 400 print film.

A pair of green machines pull westbound containers through the Belmont plant. Scanned from ISO 200 print film.

One of the two surviving GTEL 8500 gas-turbine electric locomotives, UP 18, stands tall in Union. Silent and cold, the odds of it ever running again are about a million to one. Its days of blastin... (more)

A pair of F40PHM-2s shove a passenger train toward the city. At far right, John Poshepny, partially obscured by the lamp post, and James Hart (in plaid) observe its passing. Scanned from ISO 400 p... (more)