This CD features the sounds of freight railroading in the Twenty-First Century.
We start with the microphones aboard a shortline freight train, riding on the end platform of a Center-Flow covered hopper on the Crab Orchard & Egyptian Railroad, with an SW1200 pulling us along on jointed rail. From there, we hit the mainline. The majority of the recordings were made along the Union Pacific’s Chester Subdivision, which south of Gorham, Illinois, is the mainline from St. Louis and Chicago to Texas and the Gulf Coast.
Most of the recordings are shorter recordings of trains passing, with a few exceptions.
Track 5 was made in the bottoms of the Big Muddy River, a protected wildlife area renowned for its amphibian diversity. That diversity is in the forefront, as several species of frogs sing their songs on a summer night as a train highballs down the valley.
Track 7 was recorded on a summer night north of Ware, Illinois. Traffic was unusually heavy on this night, and the scene opens with a southbound train moving down the Mississippi Valley. It was a warm, muggy night, common to this part of southern Illinois, and sound seemed to carry forever. The occasional car passes on nearby Illinois Highway 3 as the southbound slowly fades into the distance. Just when the first southbound has nearly disappeared, another southbound follows in its wake. The track runs over 15 minutes in length.
The final track on this CD was made from the Diverging Clear Productions studio in rural Dongola, Illinois. In the wee hours of the morning, the sounds of a summer night are in full force as a northbound Canadian National train sounds off for the crossing downtown at Milepost 338 (from Chicago). After passing Cross Street downtown, the train tackles the ruling northbound grade on the line that makes trains work hard most of the way from Dongola to Anna. Even at this distance it’s easy to tell that it is EMD power on the head end tonight, and the sounds of flanges biting into the curves mix with the roar of turbocharged diesels.
Yup. We hear this sound frequently around here!
Track Listing 1. Riding an AFC Center-Flow hopper on the Crab Orchard & Egyptian - 11/2/2006 - 13:39 2. Northbound Union Pacific at Aldridge, Illinois - 10/3/2006 - 1:12 3. Southbound Union Pacific at Ware, Illinois - 6/2/2006 - 2:18 4. Southbound Union Pacific at Wolf Lake, Illinois - 6/2/2006 - 2:15 5. Southbound Union Pacific near Aldridge, Illinois - 6/7/2006 - 3:30 6. Northbound Union Pacific near Reynoldsville, Illinois - 5/18/2006 - 1:39 7. Two southbound Union Pacific freights near Ware, Illinois - 6/3/2006 - 15:15 8. Runthrough BNSF coal train on the CN at Dongola, Illinois - 5/10/2006 - 2:58 9. Southbound Union Pacific stack train near Aldridge, Illinois - 5/18/2006 - 2:21 10. Northbound Union Pacific south of Ware, Illinois - 10/3/2006 - 1:23 11. Northbound Union Pacific at Reynoldsville, Illinois - 6/1/2006 - 1:17 12. Northbound Union Pacific near Ware, Illinois - 6/2/2006 - 2:25 13. Southbound Union Pacific south of Ware, Illinois - 10/3/2006 - 1:43 14. Southbound Union Pacific near Aldridge, Illinois - 5/18/2006 - 2:36 15. Southbound Union Pacific near Ware, Illinois - 6/2/2006 - 3:17 16. Southbound Union Pacific at Aldridge, Illinois - 10/3/2006 - 3:48 17. Southbound Union Pacific coal train south of Ware, Illinois - 10/3/2006 - 2:24 18. Union Pacific northbound and southbound freights near Ware, Illinois - 5/23/2006 - 4:31 19. Southbound Union Pacific auto racks at Aldridge, Illinois - 10/3/2006 - 2:18 20. Northbound Canadian National near Dongola, Illinois - 9/2/2008 - 8:44
