Road Trip 2014 - Trains in Berwyn, IL

After doing some grocery shopping with Carla in the morning I took the afternoon off to hunt trains. There are two sets of tracks not far from Andrew and Henriët's house. I headed northeast to the Berwyn Public Library where the parking lot is right next to the Canadian National tracks. I sat in the car listening to the radio for about an hour with an occasional peak up and down the line. The nice thing about flat Chicago is you can see a long way in all directions.

After an hour of no action, I decided to grab a bite to eat. Andrew and Henriët are vegetarians; Henriët's mom is vegan so we've been eating a lot of vegetables. So, I immediately set out in search of a hot dog stand to get a Chicago style dog with all the trimmings. I ended up at Polar Bear, a place like old school Dairy Queens. There were three young men working and they were a little over their heads; long waits. But the people waiting were cool and we all eventually got our orders.

As I headed toward home ready to chalk up a shut out I noticed lights on both ends of the tracks. I found a road paralleling the tracks and had time to put up my tripod and grab some shots of a CN heading east into town.

Here is the general location from where I took the shots above.

The train on the east end heading west turned off its lights and I saw a maintenance truck stopped near it. I found a parking spot near it and grabbed some photos. It took some turns and false starts to get near it. You can see the rear of the eastbound train I just captured on the right track.

Westbound CN idling. 

 It seems as though only the lead locomotive was idling; the other two may have been turned off.

Close up of CN 2709.

Here is the location where I caught the idling train

 It wasn't as busy as I had hoped but it was fun catching a railroad line that I don't normally see out in Oregon. A nice day of train watching.