The Transcon in Illinois

If you want to see the greatest show in freight railroading in this country, head to the former Santa Fe, now BNSF, main line between Chicago and Los Angeles known as the Transcon. The Santa Fe’s extension to Chicago helped to bankrupt the company only five years later, but that extension was a key factor in making the Santa Fe the most admired and one of the financially strongest railroads in this country for the next one hundred and seven years. West of Galesburg in central Illinois where we videotaped, the line once known as “the Airline” is nearly straight as an arrow as it crosses the Galesburg Plain and heads down an undulating grade into the Mississippi River Valley at Lomax. Trains then thunder along the Mississippi River for twelve miles to Niota where the great bridge over the Mississippi to Fort Madison is located. Traffic on the Transcon is five or six times what it was fifty years ago, arguably the greatest increase in traffic on any significant rail lane in the country that doesn’t handle coal from the Powder River Basin. This video shows over twenty-four hours of action on the Transcon on the one-time Santa Fe Illinois Division between Ormonde, thirteen miles west of Galesburg, and Fort Madison in October of 2016. And some Union Pacific trains between Chicago and the Southwest or Southern California use this line also, a condition of the Burlington Northern – Santa Fe merger. Two disk set. Length = two hours and 40 mnutes. This DVD can be watched with or without narration.