Small town railroad crossings that haven’t lost their trains or tracks to the mega-merger movement often have a unique and enduring character. Centralia in south central Illinois, fifty-five miles east of St. Louis, is one of those places and has long been a favorite place to watch trains by nearby fans. The names of the railroads may have changed but the trains of four railroads including Amtrak run side by side through the center of town just as they have for decades. The former Illinois Central, Chicago to New Orleans main line, now operated by Canadian National, the former Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy or Burlington, now BNSF route to the coal fields of southern Illinois and Paducah, Kentucky, and the former Southern Railway line to St. Louis, now Norfolk Southern, parallel each other through the center of this town of 13,000. And the trains of Amtrak’s Chicago to Carbondale mini-corridor stop here also. “CN, NS, BNSF, and Amtrak at Centralia, IL” shows all the trains for twenty-four hours through Centralia, Illinois in May of 2013. This program is one hour and fifty-seven minutes in length and is a two disk set. It can be watched with or without narration. Both the Blu-ray and DVD versions sell for $34.95 plus $5.00 for shipping and handling.

CSX’s LCL Subdivision between Cincinnati and Louisville, better known as the Short Line, is a busy mountain railroad smack dab in the middle of the Midwest. This spectacular, former Louisville and Nashville line parallels but does not follow the meandering south bank of the Ohio River in northern Kentucky accounting for the many hills or hogbacks that trains must traverse as they cross streams that flow northward into the Ohio River. Southbounds and northbounds each face a half a dozen climbs over one percent. When constructed in the late 1860s this was considered to be a superbly engineered line that included six tunnels and two high trestles although little straight track. Today the Short Line is a key link between North and South for CSX with upwards of twenty trains a day using this congested, single track, CTC equipped line. This program shows thirty hours of action on the railfan friendly Short Line, CSX’s LCL Subdivision between Cincinnati and Louisville, in May of 2013, including a train traversing the street running in La Grange. “The Short Line – CSX’s LCL Subdivision” is 67 minutes in length. Both the Blu-ray and DVD versions sell for $30.95 plus $5.00 for shipping and handling. This DVD can be watched with or without narration.

This program shows over twenty-four hours of action on Norfolk Southern’s busy line between Birmingham, Alabama and Meridian Mississippi. Trains were videotaped between Meridian and York, Alabama, on both sides of the Alabama – Mississippi line, in October of 2012. Thanks to the 2006 agreement between Kansas City Southern and Norfolk Southern that gave NS a thirty percent share of KCS’s Meridian to Shreveport Speedway and the right to connect with Union Pacific at Shreveport, the train count through Meridian has been growing as Union Pacific shifts their intermodal traffic between the West Coast and Southeast to the Meridian gateway, and the economy continues to slowly recover from the great recession. This route via KCS at Meridian and UP at Shreveport known as the Meridian Speedway is the shortest route from Atlanta to the West Coast. Today this historic former Southern Railway main line hosts many long intermodal and manifest trains, some with distributed power, along with Amtrak’s Crescent. UP, KCS, and NS power is freely mixed on the trains that flow between NS in Atlanta, and UP in Shreveport or KCS in Dallas. Norfolk Southern's Birmingham to Meridian Main is 65 minutes in length. This DVD can be watched with or without narration.

BNSF main lines blanket over half of the U. S., but one of the areas that you would not expect to see BNSF trains is in northern Mississippi and Alabama on former St. Louis-San Francisco track. Thanks to predecessor Kansas City, Memphis and Birmingham completing a line between Memphis and Birmingham 125 years ago, BNSF’s easternmost gateway is Birmingham in northern Alabama where BNSF and CSX share an important connection. Today this line hosts a wide mix of train types from hot “Z” trains to nineteen thousand ton coal and taconite trains with radio controlled distributed power on both ends of the train. The new Toyota assembly plant just south of where we videotaped has added new business and this line is the primary interchange in the Southeast for intermodal business between CSX and BNSF. BNSF also gets finished autos from Norfolk Southern in Birmingham. This program shows over 30 hours of action on BNSF’s Birmingham to Memphis main in northern Mississippi in October of 2012. "BNSF's Birmingham to Memphis Main" is 62 minutes in length. This DVD can be watched with or without narration.