T.G.'s Photography Blog

BNSF 5722 (on the point) and BNSF 637 (trailing) are leading an empty coal train north through the West Bottoms of Kansas City. The train was heading toward the Goose Neck, and after going through the Goose Neck would cross over the Missouri River on the Hannibal Bridge into North Kansas City, Missouri. BNSF 637 was a former Santa Fe locomotive, which at the time of this photograph, was still painted in the famous Santa Fe Warbonnet paint scheme.

Photo taken: September 26, 2005, at Kansas City, Missouri.

Metra Electric Train 756 sits just north of the Harrison Street Pedestrian Bridge in downtown Chicago. Behind the trees, on the left side of the photo, you can see the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower) reaching up toward the sky. Also, behind the trees, to the left, is the Congress Hotel.
Photo taken: December 21, 2009, at Chicago, Illinois. Photo © Tom Gatermann

The block signal controlling BNSF's end of a connector/interchange track between the Union Pacific and BNSF near Forrester Road in the West Bottoms. The highway bridges seen here are the interchange ramps between I-70 and I-35.

Photo taken: September 26, 2005. Kansas City, Missouri.

BNSF 4129 is the distributed power unit (DPU) on this empty hopper car train that is heading north on the BNSF's Hannibal Subdivision. The train has just crossed Branch Street in St. Louis, Missouri, and is passing alongside the old Illinois Traction System (ITS)/Illinois Terminal Railroad (ITC) approach to the McKinley Bridge.

The McKinley Bridge crosses the Mississippi River between St. Louis, Missouri and Venice, Illinois. Seen in the photo on the bridge's approach are the old catenary suspension supports for the ITS/ITC trains, which were originally electrically powered. In the past the McKinley Bridge carried both trains and automobiles over the river. These days, the bridge serves automobiles, pedestrians, and bikes. The approach allows biking and pedestrian traffic to access the McKinley Bridge. If you follow this link, you can see another view of the approach while it was being converted into the pedestrian and biking pathway.
Photo taken: October 17, 2005.  Location: S…

Years ago while traveling to the Quad Cities area to photograph Iowa Interstate Railway's QJ steam locomotives, my family and I came across the Keokuk and Hamilton Bridge, at Keokuk, Iowa. Originally, the bridge had both a railroad deck and a road deck. However, these days only the railroad deck is still used. Part of the old road deck has been converted to a pedestrian path, but ends at the swing span, which is open in this image to allow river boat traffic to pass. This image's view is looking eastward at the swing span and its control booth, from the Keokuk, Iowa side.I've posted other photographs of this bridge taken at the same time.

You can see a few other images that I have taken of the bridge at this link.
October 17, 2008. Keokuk, Iowa.

BNSF 9833 works as a DPU on an east bound coal train, while a Norfolk Southern train and another BNSF train wait their turn to roll through Birmingham Junction.  The BNSF's Brookfield Subdivision and the Norfolk Southern's Kansas City District share tracks between North Kansas City, Missouri and Birmingham, Missouri.
Way back when I took this image, Birmingham Junction was easily accessible. The last time I was there around 2013 or 2014, the access road, from which I took this image, was closed off and no trespassing signs were posted.

This image was captured on Kodak 400 Royal Gold film and scanned on a Nikon Coolscan film scanner. The resulting scan was saved as a Nikon NEF RAW file, which was then post processed in Adobe Camera RAW and Adobe Photoshop.
Photo taken: Spring 2001. Birmingham, Missouri.