Afternoon Rush Hour at Franklin Park, Ill.
Aug. 23, 2010

Photos by J. David Ingles

Metra North Central train #113, engine 210, 5 cars, 5:26 p.m., crosses Des Plaines River Road and has just gotten the signal to veer north at B-12 Interlocking from the CP (Soo) main line to the CN (ex- WC) main line to go to Antioch, Ill. This was the 5th of 20 trains photographed here, or in nearby Franklin Park, between 5 and 7 p.m. on Monday, August 23, 2010.

Metra Milwaukee West train #2235, engine 123, 6 cars, nears the Des Plaines River bridge, at 5:35 p.m. It has just left River Grove station.

MMW train #2237, eng. 415, 10 cars (maximum we saw), nears River Road, 5:43 p.m.

MMW inbound train #2246, in push mode, at 6:00 p.m. has 6 cars being pushed by engine 215, one of two F40's Metra bought from Tennessee Central Railway Museum, originally Amtrak 258 and 375, to help fill in while Metra has its earlierst F40's rebuilt. Nos. 215 and 216 are numbered atop the 185-214 series of "Winnebago" "F40M's" with the slanted windshield and nose carbody design, as in No. 210 above. Most of that series is assigned to the BNSF line. Metra's two remaining F40C's, 611 and 614, are still in service (on the Milwaukee North line to Fox Lake) because of this program.

MMW train #2241, eng. 102 (one of its earliest F40's), 4 cars, 6:01 p.m.

Soo 2057, one of a handful of unrenumbered, unrepainted ex-Milwaukee Road GP40's still in what's left of "patched" factory paint from decades ago, has 9 cars in tow at 6:06 p.m., heading for Bensenville yard. Milwaukee Road folks call this type of local train a "patrol." Fans have a host of unprintable nicknames for these scraggly units; most of them wear CP red now, in the 4600 series.

Westward lineup is for a train on track 1 to diverge onto the CN at B-12 as an eastbound CP stack train starts by, with engine 9526, at 6:21.

And there's the train going to the CN and Antioch, MNC #117, engine 101 and 4 cars, at 6:21 and a half.

Meantime, an eastbound Metra MW consist has scooted past on Track 2.

In Franklin Park, a pair of Indiana Harbor Belt GP40's runs light away from the camera, heading for home rails at 6:33 p.m. at B-12 after delivering to Bensenville Yard.

Coal bound from the Powder River Basin for We Energies (WEPX initials) at Pleasant Prairie, Wis., in Kenosha County, heads west thru Franklin Park at 6:55, engines 8959 and 5907 up front, with two in DPU mode, NS 7536 and BNSF 9734. The train takes BNSF's ex-BN "east end" main line from the West into Cicero, veers south on the Belt Railway of Chicago, changes ends, then goes north to Craigin and onto the CP west to Tower B-17 at Bensenville, then north on the joint-with-UP track around O'Hare Airport to Shermer, where it diverges north down onto CP's Chicago & Milwaukee Subdivision at A-20 (aka Techny) to go north to the power plant. From the time the plant, situated between former the Milwaukee Road and Chicago & North Western main lines, was built until recently, UP had the coal contract. Access from CP is only from the easterly Track, No. 1.

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