Galesburg Illinois.....

[Anonymous]

Ok folks, had to do some work there and just so you all know, it's a meca of spotting. the town is loaded, and i mean loaded with rails, a yard and a turning Wye. on average, i saw a train pass through one set of tracks every 10 minutes, and these weren't your baby trains of 20-30 cars, they were 100-200 cars in length.

Since i was working, i couldn't do much, but I did see UP, Amtrak (there's a station there) and BNSF all flow through. there's several spots that streets dead end into the double mains, so you could sit in your car and watch them roll by.

As for how the the engines i saw were labled, UP yellow, some with the flag, others without, BNSForange, SantaFe, NS Black, several NS browns, and Burlington Northern Greens are just a few that stood out. Now remember, since i'm not a diesel fan, i can't say for sure what any of them were, but one Santa Fe i saw on my way out of town today was radio-controlled (think it was on a wye turn, since it pulled across the crossing, stopped after about 30 cars, then proceeded the other direction), i think it was an SD-40 (had 6 axles and was short and had 1 person in the cab)

Definately a place to go if you want to see lot's of long trains. Oh and if you travel east out of town, following the doubles along I-34 towards galva, you'll see coal and wheat trains too, as well as the amtrak shorts (4 car deals).

EDIT: PS forgot to mention, they do have a small railroad Muesum downtown, complete with a 4-6-4, a heavyweight mail car, and a caboose all consisted. there's a seperate Heavyweight passenger car right across the street (this is all downtown) and the musuem is along the double mains and has a passenger station attached to it, complete with platforms. there's a few other oddities that i didn't look closely at (hard to do when there's traffic and you are driving by).