LEFT: It’s December 6, 2008, and big GE No. 502 leads Iowa Interstate’s CBBI (Council Bluffs, Iowa, to Blue Island, Ill.) out of the yard at Iowa City, the state’s original capital and the site of Iowa University. The manifest has just completed about an hour’s worth of switching, and the con- ductor is glad to be back in the warm cab, what with sub-freezing temperatures outside. ABOVE: On the snowy morning of January 10, 2009, a BNSF local out of Eola Yard meets a coal load holding on Main One at Aurora, Ill. Aurora is a winter wonderland this morning, yet the flow of traffic on the western end of BNSF’s “Racetrack” hasn’t slowed at all. BELOW: A westbound stack train on Main One pops around the corner, kicking up snow in its wake. The sounds of fast freight trains running in the same direction on parallel tracks here at Blue Island, Ill., in January 2009 is exhilarating, even with the temperature in the teens.
For those who like railroads, on the
other hand, the region is a treasure trove. Several of the nation’s largest rail hubs are located in this part of the coun- try, including the two biggest: Chicago and Kansas City. That’s fine, you say, but what about the variety and beauty of the scenery? Does it have anything that compares to the mountain passes through the Alleghenies, the Sierra Ne- vada or the Rockies, for example?
Beauty is where you find it. By that,
I mean every region of the U.S. has a beauty of its own, including the Midwest. Undeniably a person from Arizona, for instance, will likely have to get used to the lack of vertical reference points; the landscape seems to go to the horizon and then off into infinity, a somewhat dis- turbing sensation to people from moun- tainous regions. As people start to look around, though, they’ll start to notice interesting and provocative differences from their “home” region.
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