Kansas City Southern Action in Illinois
A little departure from local topics... Megamergers in the past six decades reduced to seven the number of Class I railroads left in the United States. And Illinois is the only state in which all seven operate. My first encounter with a Kansas City Southern train came in 2008. It was a passenger special sponsored by High Iron Travel. The journey treated riders to a rare-mileage trip from St. Louis to Chicago via KCS to Springfield on Saturday July 19. The next day the journey continued on the Illinois & Midland Railroad to Peoria and then TP&W to Galesburg on BNSF's Peoria Sub. Passenger cars were tacked onto an Amtrak train (probably the Carl Sandburg)) to Chicago. I shot video on both days. I had yet to catch a KCS freight train. I tried on August 19, 2009 but only managed to encounter the Loami (IL) tornado! Then on October 22, 2013 enroute to the Lexington Group's Kansas City (MO) meeting, I captured my first KCS freight, an eastbound Roodhouse Su...