A total of 17 trains (2 Amtraks, 5 freights and 10 Metras) pass by the Congress Park and La Grange Road stations on BNSF’s Chicago Subdivision ‘Racetrack’ over the course of about an hour and a half, beginning around 6pm at Congress Park. A couple times, I followed the rarely-used connection tracks from BNSF to the Indiana Harbor Belt main that passes underneath between the two stations, to find no traffic there- this did however, result in interesting angles on the trains. It would get dry describing all the Metra trains, so here are the (mostly non-Metra) catches that stand out, ordered by video timestamp: — 2:45 : Westbound Amtrak train #383, the Illinois Zephyr, consists of P42DC #32 and a uniform set of 5 Horizon cars as it passes Congress Park and meets an inbound Metra in the distance, slowing for its stop at La Grange. — 4:13 : The Chicago-bound California Zephyr is running about 3 hours late, led by P42DCs #137, Phase IV Heritage unit #184, and #6 as it passes Congress Park and crosses over to the center main just east. — 5:08 : An inbound Metra BNSF Line train is pushed by one of Metra’s two Operation Lifesaver units, F40PHM-2 #214, seen from the northern connector track to the IHB. — 5:32 : An eastbound BNSF intermodal train is led by a GEVO and an ex-Santa Fe ‘warbonnet’ Dash-9 as it rolls across the Indiana Harbor Belt. — 7:11 : Blowing its horn to alert some, um… wayward pedestrians, an eastbound stack train is led by two SD70MACs, #8985 and 9506, the …
Filmed on July 17, 2011. Set to HD. Before I had to take the train back home to Ohio I decided to film some action just outside of Chicago Union station. I will admit my camera work is not the best for some of these clips but, I was still getting used to this new camera. Anyways Ross (94amtrak) his dad & I found a great spot near the river that had a great view of the skyline and the tracks. We got a horn show from a friendly Metra engineer at 4:46 in the video. We clapped afterward for horn show from the engineer so, sorry if you can hear claping in the video. After this it was off to Union station were I boarded the eastbound Amtrak Capitol Limited. Video property of metraF40PH163
Video Rating: 5 / 5
