Completing our series of recordings of railroads made during the different seasons, we head trackside during the winter months. During the winter months, the sounds of nature largely fade and leave man made sounds front and center, unless you really seek out exceptions (we did, of course).
Heard are the sounds of passenger and freight trains during both the day and overnight hours. We hear trains passing at speed on the mainline, passing through junctions, and working upgrade.
Track 1 - It’s a January evening, and a snowstorm is dumping nearly a foot of snow on the area. We have set our microphones up next to a pair of birdfeeders, and our fine feathered friends are happily taking advantage as a Canadian National freight train works upgrade. The train is southbound road local A432, and it is climbing the hill into Cobden, Illinois, on the former Illinois Central’s Centralia Subdivision.
Track 2 - It’s just after 2:00am, and we are just south of the small town of Ullin, Illinois. In the background we can just hear the light overnight traffic passing on nearby I-57. To the south, a five-chime Nathan air horn announces the approach of northbound Amtrak 58, the City Of New Orleans. The train passes over the switches of a short siding as it passes through the night on its journey to Chicago.
Track 3 - On Union Pacific’s Chester Subdivision in the Mississippi River Valley south of Howardton, Illinois, a northbound freight speeds through the night on this former Missouri Pacific water-level route to St. Louis and Chicago.
Track 4 - SIMBCO is a control point on Union Pacific’s Chester Subdivision. A double crossover, it allows flexibility in moving trains over the double track Thebes Bridge over the Mississippi River, and is named for the Southern Illinois and Missouri Bridge Company that constructed the bridge at the beginning of the 20th Century. As the track begins, a train can be heard in the distance as it rumbles across the river. As it draws nearer, a southbound approaches from the other direction as it climbs the grade toward the bridge. The locomotives of both trains meet directly in front of the microphone.
Track 5 - On an unusually warm February evening, a southbound Canadian National freight passes just south of Ullin, Illinois. The warm weather has convinced a few of the spring frogs to come out of hibernation.
Track 6 - Gorham, Illinois, is the junction where Union Pacific’s line from Chicago joins the route from St. Louis to the Gulf Coast. An empty coal train is heard rolling into town on the Mt. Vernon Subdivision. As it reaches the wye, it heads north onto the Chester Sub. toward St. Louis and passes our location.
Track 7 - A mixture of G.E. and EMD power leads a northbound Canadian National freight north of DeSoto, Illinois, on a cold March morning.
Track 8 - Back at SIMBCO, a southbound Union Pacific freight climbs the approach to the Thebes Bridge. The sound of modern General Electric GEVO engines is unmistakable.
Track 9 - North of Reynoldsville, Illinois, a southbound Union Pacific freight highballs down the Chester Subdivision around midnight on a Sunday night in February.
Track 10 - A Gorham, a northbound Union Pacific freight takes the south leg of the wye from the Chester Sub. onto the Mt. Vernon Sub. toward Chicago.
Track 11 - Just south of Gorham, a northbound Union Pacific freight charges past on the way to St. Louis.
Track 12 - At the same location and perhaps twenty minutes later, another freight with Norfolk Southern power comes to a halt at a stop signal. It is waiting to head north toward Chicago.
Track 13 - In the Big Muddy River bottoms near the ghost town of Aldridge, Illinois, a northbound Union Pacific freight charges up the Chester Subdivision. It’s around 5:00am, and the train’s passage stirs up a large flock of nesting water fowl in the surround waters.
Track 14 - Winter is just beginning to turn to spring on a night in late March. The peepers are in evidence as Amtrak’s southbound City Of New Orleans passes near Balcom, Illinois. The noisy passage of the train brings a number of frogs out of their slumber, and they protest the disturbance in the train’s wake.
