Trackside Railroad Photos by Geoff Liebrandt
Greenfield Village Roundhouse A historic locomotive sits in a service bay inside the roundhouse at Greenfield Village, Dearborn, MI. It is a replica of an 1884 roundhouse built and operated by the Detroit, Toledo & Milwaukee Railroad in Marshall, MI. The village opened this roundhouse in June, 2000.
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Above: A BNSF (Burlington Northern/ Santa Fe) freight train entering Wapakoneta, OH in December, 2007. The train was heading north from Cincinnati and Dayton.
Right: BNSF diesel engines 2972 and 2353 at Wapakoneta, OH, sitting idle as the train crew waits for the track ahead to clear.
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Lakeland, FL Lakeland, Florida’s Amtrak station on the eastern edge of the downtown district.
Amtrak westbound train 197 at Lakeland, FL, March 2008. This line runs between Jacksonville, Daytona, Orlando, Lakeland, and Tampa Bay. The train runs eastward from Tampa in the morning, and westward from Jacksonville in the afternoon.
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The westbound afternoon train leaving the Lakeland station at about 4:15 pm.
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A city park in downtown Lakeland. The monument honors Confederate soldiers of the Civil War
A late 1800’s building in downtown Lakeland near the railroad tracks.
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Northwest Ohio A westbound freight train at Napoleon, Ohio, in the spring of 2007. The train is coming from Cleveland/ Sandusky and is headed west to Chicago. Although Conrail is now defunct, the front blue engine still carries the old Conrail name and paint scheme.
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Abandoned factory next to the tracks at Napoleon, OH.
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Christmas Eve at Battle Creek, MI A Canadian National freight train in Battle Creek, MI, December, 2007. The eastbound freight is moving past the Ralston Purina cereal plant in downtown Battle Creek.
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An eastbound Amtrak passenger train arrives at the Battle Creek station as a westbound freight train goes by. Amtrak runs daily service between Detroit and Chicago, and Battle Creek is one of its stops. This is the Detroit-bound train on Christmas Eve. Below: Stopped at the station platform. The tall building with the red “R� is the grain silo at the RalstonPurina cereal plant.
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Maan Al Sudani waiting at the Battle Creek Amtrak station. Maan is an Iraqi who works as an Iraqi interpreter for the US Marines in Iraq, and was on his way to visit a friend in Dearborn (a Detroit suburb). He asked me to take his photo so he could send it to his family back in Iraq.
The upper midwest had heavy snow just before Christmas. You can see snow and ice packed into various crevices and the ends of these passenger cars.
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Above: Amtrak conductors getting their train ready for departure. Left: The train leaves downtown Battle Creek heading east toward Detroit.
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Southwest Ohio Right: A Norfolk Southern freight train crossing the Miami River on its way south to Cincinnati, OH. This bridge is located between Miamisburg and Franklin, OH.
Below: A Northfolk Southern train of empty coal cars coming into Dayton at sunset. It is slowly moving through a NS rail yard in the suburb of Moraine near I-75.
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Above: CSX locos haul a trainload of empty coal cars into Dayton at the Stanley Avenue bridge in the early morning.
Left: Eaton, Ohio’s old passenger station (left) and freight depot (right). The old passenger station now serves as a state liquor outlet.
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Another view of Eaton, Ohio’s former passenger station
The old freight depot, not in current use
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Central Florida Above: A freight train with a former Conrail locomotive in front heading into Lakeland, FL in February, 2008. Right: A former Florida East Coast railroad depot in Dade City, FL.
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Crossing the Ohio River A CSX freight train crosses the Ohio river from Cincinnati into Covington, Kentucky. The concrete pier in the foreground supports the interstate I-75 bridge. The John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge appears in the distance. The Roebling bridge opened in December, 1866, and at that time was the world’s longest suspension bridge. Roebling also designed the Brooklyn Bridge, which opened in1886 and surpassed his Cincinnati bridge in both length and height.
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