While I was in Kansas City last December with the BNSF Christmas Special I missed getting a photo of one of Amtrak’s Siemens Charger SC-44’s by a few minutes so on Thursday April 5th I started my day in Lee’s Summit, Missouri with an agenda. I had done my homework on Google Earth and Amtrak’s website, so I was aware that Lee’s Summit had a very nice depot and that Missouri River Runner number 314 eastbound to St. Louis out of Kansas City would arrive at 8:51 am probably led by one of the Amtrak Midwest Chargers. I arrived shortly after 8:00 am and checked out the area.
The UP main here is oriented north-south and old Missouri Pacific depot is on the east side of the tracks and is now the local Chamber of Commerce. The Amtrak platform is on the west side of the tracks so with the morning sun behind me I stood at the top of the stairs next to the fence on the track side of the depot. A small crowd of passengers was gathering and right on time Train 314 arrived with Charger SC-44 #4623 leading.
Once the train stopped I moved to the head end for these two shots over the fence.
Then I quickly moved to the other side of the SE 3rd Street crossing for this sequence of the train leaving town with a good view of the local scenery. I even had a nice clock to work into the photos.
The train had several dead-heading baggage cars on the rear that are supposed to assist in making sure the grade crossing warning systems would activate.
Happy with my success I drove east and north from Kansas City towards Bosworth and a few hours later caught this eastbound unit train with a 2 x 2 locomotive setup on the BNSF Transcon a few miles west of Carrollton, Missouri.
The train soon stopped for a welder to clear up and I made it into Carrollton before it reached the old AT&SF depot.
The east end of the depot has been modified for use by Maintenance of Way.
Carrollton is the east end of joint trackage with the Norfolk Southern west to Kansas City and next I heard the dispatcher talking to a westbound NS train that wanted to enter the Transcon coming off of their main line. I drove down and caught it with these two photos as the result.
Driving out of Carrollton I took a grab shot of this caboose that more than likely came from the NS family although the Southern never ran here.
I took the back roads out of Carrollton heading northeast and next paused at an old steel truss bridge over the Transcon about halfway to Bosworth. Here I caught two westbound trains in just a few minutes.
After this I drove 30 or so miles north to Chillicothe for the night I went down to the old Wabash station, now re-purposed as a BBQ restaurant.
With train order signals and operator bays on each side of the building I am assuming this was a joint operation by the Wabash and either the Burlington or the Milwaukee, all of which are long gone today.
I never would have guessed that Chillicothe was the birth place of sliced bread.
Parked a block east of the old depot was this ex-CNW GP7 that was obviously still in use by the Missouri North Central as it had a block heater plugged in and running.
If you look closely on the long hood you can still see the remains of the CNW “Route of the Streamliners” logo.
