On a gloomy Sunday afternoon in Downtown Aurora, the eastbound Southwest Chief sprints over Galena Blvd on the 2,000 foot long elevated trackage splitting through the heart of downtown, which was ... (more)

A pair of Amtrak GE B32BWH “Pepsi can” locomotives with the eastbound Southwest Chief fly out of Ancona in a panned photograph on the afternoon of May 15, 1993. Neatly-planted rows of corn tha... (more)

The sun sets as a late Amtrak Southwest Chief hustles east on the last legs of its journey to Chicago, seen here passing the vintage Chicago Burlington & Quincy depot in La Grange. Amtrak P42DC’... (more)

Amtrak train 4, the eastbound Southwest Chief, is stopped at the train’s first station stop to load passengers. Amtrak P42DC 25 (MUed with P42DC 50) has a clear signal this evening but i... (more)

Amtrak train 4, the eastbound Southwest Chief, makes its first of 30 stops between Los Angeles and Chicago, and traveling through 8 states (California; Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas... (more)

Amtrak train 4, the eastbound Southwest Chief, has power that might be more suited to its westbound counterpart, train 3. Amtrak P42DCs 3 and 33 are leading 6-car train 4 on this evening. ... (more)

Amtrak train 4, the eastbound Southwest Chief, got stuck behind a lot of traffic congestion caused by a BNSF freight (rumored to be the H-BARLAC) fouling all three mainlines somewhere betwe... (more)

Neither Trick, Nor Treat

On the 31st of October 2021, I got off this train to find someone had found in the BNSF General Orders that the famed pair of signals at MP 706 on the ... (more)

As the last light of the day begins to fade, a small group of passengers gathers on Track 3 at Fullerton as the eastbound Southwest Chief prepares to make its first stop after departing Los Angele... (more)

The Southwest Chief quickly slows down as it prepares to stop at Amtrak's Flagstaff station. This is one of two passenger trains that stop here daily. Amtrak 3 will arrive later at night.

While the man attraction of the Raton pass line is the semaphores, another disappearing element of the railroad fabric that lingers on Raton is the code line. Some code lines remain, but the numbe... (more)

Rolling along the Los Angeles River under a web of high tension power lines, and about to pass under the bridge of the 101 Freeway (and beyond that, the much fancier bridge Cesar Chavez Avenue Bri... (more)

Southwest Chief ... not too terribly late ... rips along just having passed the tracks that hosted (until about a year ago) the Escalante Western.

Happy 50th Anniversary, Amtrak!

Fifty years to the day from the first run of Amtrak train 18, the eastbound Super-Chief-El Capitan, its 2021 version, train 4 Sou... (more)

Amtrak’s eastbound Southwest Chief flies over a fill along a trackside pond west of Leeds, Illinois, on May 9, 1992. Powering train 4 is a pair of new GE B32BWH locomotives bracketing an older E... (more)