A westbound autorack train descends the grade toward the Red River valley on the former Northern Pacific, seen east of Hawley, MN.

The Empire Builder heads west out of Hawley with Charger blue and red leading the way. A late season winter storm gave the landscape along the Buffalo River a perfect blanket of snow overnight.

Local railfans know that if you get enough of a NW wind and no trains for a few hours on main 1, luck just might be on your side here. Said luck showed up on this March Saturday with a westbound H... (more)

After playing musical chairs with their passenger cars near Rice to set out a bad order, the westbound Empire Builder kicks up the snow at sunrise near Hawley.

Father and Son enjoy the sunset in one of our new favorite photo spots, Buffalo River State Park. Here, Hudson works hard to size up both the train and the sagging sun.

A westbound BNSF empty crude oil train dusts snow and ice from the rails at Hawley on a bitterly cold winter morning in western Minnesota.

A pair of GEs leads a manifest freight westward under the eastern wooden bridge east of Hawley, running wrong main due to a couple of eastbounds also running wrong main.

Priority stacks meet mixed freight from Northtown on the straightaway between the Hawley wooden bridges. The orange Subaru did not let me down when I switched bridges with just 30 seconds to spare... (more)

Just minutes after a perfect winter sunrise, Amtrak's Empire Builder flies under an old wooden bridge east of Hawley with an unusual consist today. Of note is the second locomotive, AMTK 42, paint... (more)

These three EMDs are right at home pulling big tonnage west toward Mandan as they sweep under MN 32 east of Hawley.

Oil loads from North Dakota slowly pick up speed after meeting a westbound Z at Hawley. It was touch and go for a couple minutes, but the Z cleared just in time for me to make use of the recent ra... (more)

Westbound coal empties behind a pair of EMDs roll downgrade around one of the curves in the Lake Park area as they head toward Dilworth for a crew change.

Westbound oil empties cruise around one of the curves between Lake Park and Hawley with a SD70ACe leading the way.

BNSF 5763 is a decade old, but it was at least recently washed and looking pretty good as it leads a stack train westbound toward Dilworth.

The sun is quickly rising into the summer sky and working to burn off some patchy fog near Hawley as a Q train heads for Dilworth.