There are plenty of constants in this scene compared to Chicago's HP Junction -- 1978. The signals and trackage are the same, as are some of the buildings. The old brick mill structure has been razed, but the newer, somewhat unattractive green industrial building has been expanded. However, the trains are remarkably different than those of 25 years ago. Those of us who are frequent train watchers sometimes don't realize how rapidly the engines and rolling stock have been changing.
Contents:
Contributors
The Trains
Those Trains in the Distance
Cars: Chris Denbow, Tom Burger, David Epling, Dave Hersrud, Dave Howarth, Cullen McCormick, Erik Rasmussen, Gary Sereico, Gregg Staley, Matt Steinblock, Nick Wilson, Alfred Woolfolk II
Intermodal: Ed Bindler, Dave Hersrud, Austin MacDougal, Cullen McCormick, Gary Sereico, James Solakidis, Gregg Staley, Nick Wilson, Alfred Woolfolk II
Engines: Chris Denbow, Brendan Frisina, Dan Learn, Cullen McCormick, Brad Morocco, Erik Rasmussen, Gary Sereico, James Solakidis, Gregg Staley, Matt Steinblock, Nick Wilson, Alfred Woolfolk II
Metra: Cars and engines by Justin Nelson.
Structures: Christopher Dawalt (buildings), Dave Hersrud (lineside structures), Dan Learn (roadbed), Gregg Staley (signals and switch heater tanks).
American Orient Express. All cars are drawn by David Epling. There are no duplicates, and each car is in the order recorded by the artist as the train crossed the Keddie Wye in California.
BNSF Grain Westbound. Just about any covered hopper that can hold grain has been pressed into service, as this train illustrates. There are a few duplicates in the consist, but most of the 50+ cars are not duplicates.
BNSF Grain MT's Eastbound. In 2003, more and more BNSF LO's were being seen, but the ATSF and BN predecessor cars were certainly ubiquitous. Most of the ATSF, BN and BNSF cars are by Alfred Woolfolk II, but some are oldies but goodies from Chris Denbow. you'll also notice that the BNSF swoosh logo is not yet in evidence.
CN Autoracks Eastbound. There are several artists represented, and there are no duplicates in the consist.
CN Intermodal Eastbound. This is a "dog's breakfast" of various intermodal traffic, plus some priority autorack business tacked on to the end. Included are international stacks, single-level containers, domestic hot pigs, foreign and domestic mixed stacks, and a few all-domestic 53' stacks. This is north-south service, and it does not have the homogeniety of the east-west port-origination/destination traffic.
CP Eastbound Manifest Train. The Soo-Line engines are disappearing, and are being replaced by impressive new GE's and MAC's of Canadian Pacific, but surprisingly, many of the cars look virtually identical to those of 25 years ago. A good thing has legs.
CSX Domestic Intermodal Eastbound. This entire train has been completely re-worked, as of February 2009. International sea cans have been removed, except for some underneath 53' domestic cans.
Indiana Harbor Belt Mill Service local. This train is typical of the major business in northwest Indiana that is tied to the steel and metals processing industry. Gondolas, some covered hoppers, cushion steel coil cars, and a few tanks make up these non-descript, but very important trains.
Iowa Interstate Eastbound Ethanol Unit Train. The consist is 100% Alfred Woolfolk's ADM tanks. Prototype trains generally are 80 cars, but to relieve the boredom, I've shortened it to 50. The engines are also Alfred's, and the IAIS sand car spacer is by Erik Rasmussen.
Iowa Interstate Westbound. The consist is tailored to loosely represent those heading west out of Blue Island towards the Hawkeye State. Information on such consists has been provided by Erik Rasmussen. This is quite a mixture of manifest, international containers, domestic containers and pig, and mixtures of international and domestic containers. Most of these cars have destinations within Iowa, and are not bridge traffic.
NS Intermodal Westbound. Like the CSX Containers Eastbound, this train has been completely re-worked in May and June 2007. It is now representative of unit movements of international containers. The long string of single level containers has come up from Norfolk, as double stacks cannot clear tunnel clearances between Roanoke and Columbus, OH (as of 2003). More double stacks were added in early 2009, and the GP60's were replaced by far better GP60 gifs by Alfred Woolfolk II.
Schnabel Car Movement. The monster Schnabel car is by Brad Morocco.
UP Junk (CNW) Grainer Westbound. The United States is coming out of a recession, and the chickens have to be fed! Hundreds of stored CNW and other grain cars are being pressed into service. The giffed LO's in this train date back to the Hersrud/Denbow dawn of the train gif era, and are a delight to see as the first decade of the Twenty-First Century draws to a close. This isn't a pretty train, but it's a money maker, and one that is seen even today throughout the MidWest. There are 53+ cars in the consist, and as artists create more train gifs, look for additions.
Woolfolk Manifest. Alfred Woolfolk II has been very active in creating new train gifs. This train, led by the paired GE GEVO demonstrators, has a complete consist of Alfred's creations (including the engines, of course).
One thing I wanted to do in this scene was to include the distant trains that first showed up in the Chicago 1978 scene, but make the trains even smaller. The 1978 scene's trains are 16 pixels in height, and the 2003 scene's are 15 pixels. I have made the roadbed for the former 4 pixels high, and the latter is 3 pixels. These trains are built using Photoshop's ImageReady, and are one very long, skinny gif when finished. The image is then re-sized. This is done to avoid having to re-size every image and store the resulting image with a different name than the original, etc. I got the idea to use a "string" rather than the more normal compilation of a train using many individual gifs from Dave Hersrud.