Railfanning the Wisc. Southern?

[Anonymous]

One of these weekends, I'd like to photograph the Wisconsin Southern Railroad. Does anyone have any tips on locations to hit, train depart times, etc?

Thx much,
- Stack [:)]

[jeaton]

Stack,

The only thing I know is that the Janesville to Chicago train heads out in the afternoon. I have often seen it setting east of Janesville where the line runs about a quarter mile south of Highway 14. I assume its departure is timed so that it hits Fox Lake after the last Metra train gets to Fox Lake.

Seems to me that there may not be much more than one run per day over most their lines, and it might be pretty slow on weekends. I am sure others know more than I. (For me, thats not unusual. My stepson knows more than I do-just ask him. LOL)

Jay

[Anonymous]

The line from Janesville to Milton is being rebuilt (new crossings, ties and welded rail) so you may get some good M.O.W. pictures of that kind of machinery there. W.S. runs trains from Janesville to the Monroe, Wi. Ethanol plant (daily?). The yard at Janesville still has a roundhouse and turntable. W.S. has a paint shop and new yard in Horicon, Wi. that are nice to visit too.

[eolafan]

Since the company I work for is located in Hartford, WI I often see or at least hear WISOU trains around there. They seem to go west bound through Hartford really early in the morning hours (like six a.m. or so) and eastbound in the late afternoon (like about five p.m.). They can be fairly long and powered by up to five Geeps or older SD's

[Noah Hofrichter]

There's a couple of things I can tell you. First though, Jay was right, there is only about one run per day, though most of them are go out come back kind of things, so you have two chances of catching them in a particular city.

The WSOR runs a JH, Janesville to Horicon transfer, Every weekday after noon, and maybe every weekend I'm not completly sure on that one, at about 3 or 4 o'clock from Janesville. Every saturday morning, they run a HJ, Horicon Janesville transfer, in the early morning. It goes through Whitewater, WI early, between 6 and 7ish am, although sometimes it's more like 8ish, from ehat I'm told. You also might want to ask Ken Stoker (forum name: Stokerk) about them because he lives near Whitewater and he can tell you about the times they run through there.

There's also a Sunday night train that leaves from the Madison yard, for Reedsburg WI in the afternoon. They usually come up to Reedsburg About 8:00pm so if you could catch them somewhere along the way, you could get some good picsbefore the sun sets in the summer. They must leave the yard sometime around 4:00ish or maybe 4:30, because they come straight up to Reedsburg and then work their way back, and its a four hour trip to Reedsburg.

The Janesville yard is usually busy with either an engine switching the yard or a train getting ready to depart. www.wsorrailroad.com/jobs1a.html Thats the site, if it worked, for the job abbreviations of the WSOR. A couple of them also list the call times for the crews on them, if that's any help. I'll see if I can think of any more and let you know if I do.
And you might want to check out the website in my sig., thats there official website.

Noah

[Anonymous]

Being a native of Janesville, this is probably one of your best bets to get some shots of the WSOR. They always have a few locomotives here and there sittin around. They also have some ex UP locomotives ( I assume waiting for paint) sittin in the yard the last time I drove by.

But if you go to Janesville, you might as well head on over to the UP yards as well. They service the General Motors plant as well as running 100+ hopper cars to and from a large grain elevator in Evansville which is to the NW of Janesville. Also ICE runs up to Janesville as well to service the Freedom Plastics plant.

I am not aware of times and dates but Im sure whatever day you choose to come up, you wont be sorry.