Man's Best Friend
There's nothing like sharing an afternoon of railfanning with your best friend, even if she's a little crazy (and I'm not talking about my wife). On this chilly but ... (more)

In celebration of its 150th anniversary, Union Pacific is running a special train around its system led by the famed trio of E9s. This morning the train departed Spokane after another successful ... (more)

A typical winter day in Montana: Big skies, frigidly cold, impressive mountains looming on the horizon, and a wind-scoured landscape with drifts of snow piled in the lee of every contour. Throug... (more)

Red at night, railfans' delight. An incredible sunset provided a spectacular end to an incredible day spent by a group of Northwesterners on BNSF's Needles Sub on February 25th. This was ... (more)

Late on a stormy summer afternoon, Deseret Power Railway Units 1, 2 and 3 sweep past acres of sage brush and exposed outcrops at 27 Mile, about halfway between the Utah border and Bonanza Power Pl... (more)

The sun has set, but the railroad doesn't shut down for the night. A northbound train shatters the calm of a late-spring evening as it rumbles across the causeway at the mouth of Padden Creek, pa... (more)

Red at night / Photographer's delight: One more photo from that incredible moonlit, snowy, magical night in the Cascades two years ago. I find it remarkable how reflections from the icy cr... (more)

After setting out a few dozen empty grain hoppers and WIR 20 at Spangle, a W&I grain shuttle (with BNSF road power) works southward through the fertile Palouse toward its ultimate destination at O... (more)

A Cascade Range blizzard is in full effect as BNSF's daily M-EVESPO glides across the Skykomish River during twilight's gloom. (With apologies to Bob Ross for stealing a few thousand of his ether... (more)

Black Canyon Part II: If Black Canyon is merely amazing in daylight, then it's downright dramatic under a ful... (more)

Soaring nearly 200 feet above the Snake River, a Boardman coal load stretches across nearly the entire 3,920-foot length of UP's Joso Bridge, its tail end still strung out through CPE273 on the fa... (more)

A loaded CN coal train passes an empty CP grain train in the narrow confines of Black Canyon. At this location, the Thompson River twists through an oxbow so tight that the only routing option av... (more)

The light at the end of the tunnel is, in fact, an approaching train: In less than a second, a westbound will emerge from the darkness of Cascade Tunnel into the gloom of a twilit evening. The h... (more)

Late on a very hot summer afternoon, an eastbound loaded coal train is in the charge of a half-dozen big GEs working hard up the 1% grade out of Woodside. The massive Book Cliffs loom in the dist... (more)

During the record-breaking heat wave in Seattle this past week my thoughts turned to staying cool, which naturally led to fond memories of Stevens Pass in winter. On one such journey in January o... (more)