Honestly, when I heard there was going to be not one, but TWO Illinois Central painted SD70 locomotives leading CN manifest train E251 on Feburary 5th, I couldn’t believe it, Only 20 or so examples of the Illinois Central Black and White SD70’s still exist and with me not having photographed or filmed any of them (I have filmed plenty of the Black and White GP40R’s, not SD70’s), I couldn’t pass this up, me and friend Sonny met on the west side of the Pontiac Amtrak station on a VERY cold afternoon and waited for about an hour. At 4:45 PM, the horn from Ex IC SD70 #1021 could be heard in the distance. Then the headlight popped around the curve at Rapid Street, and before I knew it, I was looking at two 27 year old black and white SD70’s. Since I do both photography and videography, you could hear my camera shutter going crazy in my video, and honestly, I thought these were some of my best photos.

If there’s one thing that will make railfans go out of their way that is not a heritage or special interest unit, It’s EMD power. they’re just, special, they aren’t just plain Jane SD70ACe’s, GEVO’s, etc. Such as in this case, I had captured a CSX SD70MACe leading CSX K596 south of Toledo, K596, which is a unit (or single bulk commodity) steel slab train that runs from Detroit to Cincinnati, is known for having pretty unique power, from SD40-2’s to GEVO’s to SD70MACe’s, like this one. Just before I left Deshler, Ohio (south of Toledo) to head home, I saw the rear of K596 stopped south of town, Obviously I took the chance to get some closeups and drove down about 2 miles to K596’s headend, to find the SD70MACe in particular, 4556 (with CSX’s new logo), still running in low idle alongside a CM44AH. I got 5 minutes of unlooped engine idle footage and also fired off some good photos, since this train wasn’t moving anytime soon, I snapped upwards of 200 photos. Not bad for a 4 hour morning in Deshler.

It's day 5 of the Michigan Railfan Films midwest tour, after stops in Chesterton, Indiana and Fort Madison, Iowa. It was time for Galesburg, Illinois. When my dad and I were pulling up to an overpass where the BNSF tracks go over a road, I saw some shiny stainless steel passenger cars. I thought originally it was an Amtrak train, Until I saw a bi-level car and the train was parked on the station's spur, I was still half asleep and didn't put two and two together until I saw a BNSF GEVO hooked onto the two cars, I couldn't believe it, it was the BNSF Track Geometry Train, When I was in Fort Madison, I saw the GEO train, but it was shot blocked by another train, and this was my real opportunity to get close ups of the train. Some other railfans showed up with their best cameras and flashes. The train was overnighting in Galesburg and was waiting for a new crew to take it through Fort Madison. The point of this train is to scan the rals and check for any defects.

I was visiting my friend Casey in Boston this past summer for a weekend, in the months leading up to my visit she and I were talking about doing some railfanning around South Station in Boston. Unfortunately she had track practice that morning, but I still had some time to kill, so my mom and I drove out to Shirley, a town roughly 30 minutes outside of the city. I pulled up to Shirley just as the approach lit signals at the east side of the station activated, Now, I’m not familiar with this territory but some friends of mine gave me some pointers, but this was COMPLETELY unexpected, I heard the sound of a K5L airhorn just a few moments later, coming from the west and when the train came around the curve, I couldn’t believe it, it was MBTA Continuous Welded Rail train! As the train got closer, I started firing of photos. The lead unit on this train was MBTA F40PH-2C #1055, and when I took this photo, I saw a black and white GE sticking out from behind, I couldn’t believe it, it was a NS ES40DC. This is EXTREMELY rare, normally freight locomotives lead passenger locomotives (when they break down), but this time it was a MBTA F40 leading a NS GEVO and a CWR train, this would go down as one of my best catches of 2022.

I arrived in Elkhart, Indiana on a gorgeous spring Saturday morning, I had beaten Amtrak 49 (the lakeshore limited) to Elkhart by just 10 minutes. When I heard the horn on the leader, I for some reason thought it sounded familiar, Then the gates went down, and then a black, red, white and blue P42 came around the curve, low and behold, it was Amtrak 145, one of Amtrak's 3 Phase III heritage units. These units wear Amtrak's old red, white and blue stripes livery with a black nose on the front.

With the Canadian Pacific/Kansas City Southern merger upon us, I tried my hardest to find a place with as many KCS locomotives as possible, which I happened to find in, well, Kansas City! This picture was taken through a hole in the fence of KCS' main yard in the city of the chiefs. Odds are if I return to this exact location in the next year, these locomotives and covered hopper cars will be in CP&KCS branding

This location maybe one of the busiest railfanning locations in the entire country, as evidenced by this picture of an Eastbound Union Pacific empty coal train passing over a BNSF manifest entering into BNSF's KC Yard. This location is called Santa Fe Junction, which is roughly 10 minutes outside of downtown Kansas City. This location sees roughly 100 trains per day, and is home to 6 railroads, this place should be on any raiflans' bucket list.

A few very unusual occurrences, well, occurred in order for me to get this photo of a stopped BNSF intermodal train in Fort Madison, Iowa. Including this train stopping almost a 1/2 a mile away from the signals, the former CitiRail GEVO trailing (which is now owned by Canadian National), and the VERY friendly engineer, BNSF crews are not known to be so friendly to railfans, but this engineer was awesome, he asked what setting I wanted the headlights at for my pictures, which I asked for full brightness with the ditchlights on, add the sunset in and you get a pretty dang good photo.