T.G.'s Photography Blog

UP 5021 - East St. Louis, IL Union Pacific 5021 (an EMD SD50) waits on the southern edge of Valley Junction waiting for clearance to proceed north. Notice the sign to the right of the train which indicates the different radio channels train crews are to use depending on which railroad they need to communicate with. Today the locomotive's identifying number has been reassigned to a newer UP locomotive, an EMD SD70M. Valley Junction is probably the busiest railroad junction in the St. Louis area. The Junction has three railroad yards, the biggest of which is the Alton and Southern's Gateway Yard. The Alton and Southern is a subsidiary of the Union Pacific. In addition to Gateway Yard, there is also the Kansas City Southern's (KCS) rail yard, plus a small yard sandwiched between Gateway Yard and the KCS yard. Photograph taken: April 17, 1997, at East St. Louis, Illinois.

BNSF 870 BNSF 870, a patched Santa Fe locomotive in the Warbonnet paint scheme, leads a freight train west on BNSF's Cuba Subdivision, at Pacific, Missouri. BNSF 870 was built as Santa Fe (ATSF) 870 in April of 1993. The locomotive is a General Electric built C40-8W. Cuba Subdivision The Cuba Subdivision runs from the western end of BNSF's Lindenwood Yard (milepost 7.2), in St. Louis, Missouri, to Springfield Yard (milepost 239.7), in Springfield, Missouri. The line was formerly owned by the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway, which was merged into the Burlington Northern Railroad. When the Burlington Northern and the Santa Fe railroads merged in 1996, the line became part of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway, which is today named the BNSF Railway. From St. Louis to Springfield, the line runs on a southwesterly directiton, into the Ozark Mountains. It closely follows Interstate 44 between the two cities. Much of the line is hilly and the maximum speed limit on ...

MRS 256 - St. Louis, MO Manufactuers Railway System (MRS) 256 shoves a cut of MRS boxcars off the MRS' 2nd Street trackage toward an industrial siding. The industry that was to receive the cut of box cars was a block over on off of 3rd Street. The MRS The MRS was a small switching operation that was owned by the Anheuser-Busch Brewery. When InBev bought Anheuser-Busch, the railroad was sold off. Now Foster Townsend Rail Logistics, Inc. operates the railroad. The railroad still switches the brewery complex and also does a lot of engine rebuilding. However, I believe that all of the 2nd Street trackage has been abandoned. The 2nd Street trackage isn't used much these days due to most of the customer base going away. In this general area there were three customers who received weekly rail service. The largest customer at this location was a chemical plant which was closed and torn down. At one time the 2nd Street trackage ran for just over two miles from the MRS yard...

Union Pacific's (UP) Challenger 3985 thunders through the small town of Altoona, KS., as it leads the Superbowl XXXVIII special . The train is heading north on the UP's Coffeyville Subdivision toward Kansas City, MO. After being on display in Houston, TX., during the Superbowl, the train is heading back home to Cheyenne, WY. Photo taken: February 8, 2004, at Altoona, Kansas.

ATSF 96 - East St. Louis, IL Santa Fe Railway (ATSF) 96, an EMD FP45, sits idle on one of the locomotive servicing tracks in the Chicago, Missouri, and Western Railroad (CM&W) yard. ATSF 96 is a cowl locomotive, which features a full width body behind the cab. Today this rail yard is operated by the Kansas City Southern. ATSF 96 was painted in Santa Fe's Warbonnet paint scheme. This image was scanned from a Kodak T-Max 400 negative and post processed in Adobe Photoshop, along with Nik Software's Dfine2 (to reduce the grain in the sky). The negative was originally developed in Kodak D-76 film developer. Photo taken: 1989, at East St. Louis, Illinois.

LMX 8512 - Old Monroe, MO LMX 8512, a GE B39-8E , leads a BNSF train around the bend at Old Monroe, Missouri. The freight train is heading north on BNSF's Hannibal Subdivision . At this location you could see the train for quite a ways, as the fields here lay in the flat Mississippi River valley. From here the train would travel on north toward Hannibal, Missouri, the town that the subdivision is named after, and then on toward Quincy, Missouri. At Quincy, the train could have taken two different routes. One route would have taken it toward Galesburg, Illinois, and the other route would have taken the train on north toward Iowa. About the image The photograph was taken on a 35mm transparency. The slide was scanned using a Nikon CoolScan 9000ED film scanner. Post processing was done in Adobe Photoshop. Photo taken: April 1997, at Old Monroe, Missouri.

After a journey from Kansas City, Missouri, Union Pacific 3985 has arrived in Jefferson City, Missouri, during the locomotive's  Superbowl XXXVIII tour special . This shot was taken while the locomotive was being serviced. From here the locomotive traveled on to St. Louis, Missouri. The train's final destination was Houston, Texas, where it would be on display during Superbowl XXXVIII's festivities. About the image The image was scanned from a Kodak Ektachrome slide, with a Nikon CoolScan 9000 ED film scanner. It was then converted into black and white using Adobe Photoshop. Photo taken: January 15, 2004, at Jefferson City, Missouri.

Mount Rushmore Recently I've been digging into some of the scans I have done of my old film images. This photograph of Mount Rushmore was taken during a family vacation to the Black Hills of South Dakota , back in 1991. The view is looking through a tunnel on the Needles Highway. As you can guess from the sign, the tunnels on the Needles Highway are only wide enough for one car to pass through at a time. The image was captured on Kodak Tri-X black and white film. The film was either processed in Kodak D-76 or Kodak HC-110 film developer. Those were my two mainstay developers at the time. The negative was scanned on a Nikon ED9000 film scanner and processed in Adobe Photoshop. Photo taken: August 1991, near Keystone, South Dakota.

SP 214 and SP 8706 - Cahokia, IL Southern Pacific 214 sits in the siding, as Southern Pacific 8706 leads a manifest freight south on the Union Pacific's Chester Subdivision. This photograph was taken at Airflite Road , near Parks Airport, now called Downtown St. Louis Airport. SP 8706 and its train have just come through Valley Junction, which is about 1.5 miles north of this location, and is heading toward Union Pacific's Dupo Yard , though, Dupo Yard was not the train's final destination. This shot was taken about a year or so after the Union Pacific and Southern Pacific merger, which occurred in 1996. Both locomotives were owned by Union Pacific, but they had not been patched. This meant that the locomotives retained their full Southern Pacific paint schemes, lettering, and numbering. A patched locomotive is one that will still retain the former railroads paint scheme, but the current owning railroad's reporting marks or name has been applied to the locomo...