Two letter abbreviatons galore this early morning as UP's COKNS has a guest appearance from a sweet NS motor. Just south of Ogden Jct we witness the soon to be NS 553 and its 7244' of empty coal buckets. The UP crew had a kick with my presence early early in the morning. Lucky for them their journey is nearly over - it'll only be another 20 minutes before the train gets a home road crew at Ashland Ave.

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I encourage anyone to offer up a guess as to where in the big city this is, but that would take a while I bet.

We are at the "intersection" of 122nd and Burley Ave along the NS' Cal River line, which diverges off the main at CP 509. In historical terms this was a Pensy right of way, used to serve all the massive industry on the east side of the Calumet River. The many steel mills and coke plants have dwindled down to just a handful of industry today. In fact there was an impressive looking deer just across the tracks before the train showed up. This IHB job is headed for KCBX South at 109th Street. And I'll never pass up an opportunity to get dirt on the Koch bros, as this is one of the many sites on the SE side that have open petcoke storage, which are giving this community a black eye, and black lungs. Anyways...

Following this railroad to the south, it connects to the ol' Bernice Cutoff at Hegwisch, and thus you have the last remaining stretch of that trackage that still sees use. A question for those with deeper knowledge; who owned the trackage that goes west towards the CWI, west of where this railroad diverges north? I assume it was a PRR connection to the CWI, but I do not have any marking on the maps I have that show enough detail. Such a mess in this area with PRR and IHB branches interweaving.

Tags:   Yellow

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Looking right back at where I shot the second photo in this series.

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Thanks to a heads up from Mr. Easton, I was able to head out and get a freight through the neighborhood at Edgebrook. Light was constantly changing with the clouds moving quite fast overhead, but I somehow correctly exposed the shot.

I never pass up an opportunity to get something between A-20 and A-5.

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Probably could've gotten more of the skyline in this panorama, but my mind was on autopilot and did not frame the photo for maximum awesomeness. Still a fun photo tho, no?

300mm lens that doesn't focus to infinity properly doesn't exactly make framing easy, but I made it happen.

Tags:   Chicago

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