If you want to see the greatest show in freight railroading in this country, head to the former Santa Fe, now BNSF, main line between Chicago and Los Angeles known as the Transcon.  The Santa Fe’s extension to Chicago helped to bankrupt the company only five years later, but that extension was a key factor in making the Santa Fe the most admired and one of the financially strongest railroads in this country for the next one hundred and seven years.  West of Galesburg in central Illinois where we videotaped, the line once known as “the Airline” is nearly straight as an arrow as it crosses the Galesburg Plain and heads down an undulating grade into the Mississippi River Valley at Lomax.  Trains then thunder along the Mississippi River for twelve miles to Niota where the great bridge over the Mississippi to Fort Madison is located.  Traffic on the Transcon is five or six times what it was fifty years ago, arguably the greatest increase in traffic on any significant rail lane in the country that doesn’t handle coal from the Powder River Basin.   This video shows over twenty-four hours of action on the Transcon on the one-time Santa Fe Illinois Division between Ormonde, thirteen miles west of Galesburg, and Fort Madison in October of 2016.  And some Union Pacific trains between Chicago and the Southwest or Southern California use this line also, a condition of the Burlington Northern – Santa Fe merger.  Two disk set.  Length = two hours and 40 mnutes.  This DVD can be watched with or without narration.

This program takes a look at the two BNSF main lines between the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis and the adjacent cities of Moorhead, Minnesota and Fargo, North Dakota. Fargo is referred to as the Gateway to the Northern Plains and is the largest City in North Dakota.  The predecessors of these two lines are the first railroad in Minnesota, the St. Paul and Pacific, nee St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba, later Great Northern Railway, and the Northern Pacific Railway, the first northern transcontinental railroad and third overall transcontinental.  First, we will show trains on BNSF’s former Northern Pacific Staples Subdivision around New York Mills and Perham, Minnesota.  Perham in sixty-five miles east of Dilworth, BNSF’s main terminal for the Fargo-Moorhead area, and one hundred seventy-five miles west of Northtown, BNSF’s primary classification yard in the Twin Cities.  Then we will cover the trains on the former Great Northern Twin Cities to Fargo main between the outskirts of Breckenridge, Minnesota and Benson.  Breckenridge is forty-eight miles railroad east of Fargo and two hundred and fifteen miles from St. Paul.  These two lines handle all of BNSF’s Northern Transcon traffic between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest and are part of BNSF’s northern coal corridor and are the eastern outlet for crude oil from the Bakken Shale oil field in North Dakota.   In spite of the downturn in coal and crude oil, these lines are still quite busy and the fall grain rush was also on when we visited BNSF in Minnesota.  BNSF has recovered from its Bakken crude oil induced meltdown on their Northern Transcon in 2013 and 2014 after billions were spent on added capacity and new power.  This DVD shows over 24 hours of traffic on both of BNSF’s main lines between the Twin Cities and Fargo in September of 2016.  Two DVD set.  Two hours and ten minutes in length.  This DVD can be watched with or without narration.

Alaska - the Last Frontier, land of glaciers, incredible vistas, the mountain known as “The Great One” - Denali, and incomparable wildlife – whatever superlative one applies to our largest and forty-ninth state, it can also be applied to the Alaska Railroad, arguably the most unique railroad in the United States.  The Alaska Railroad bills itself as “the last full-service railroad in North America”.  Twenty-seven percent of its revenues are from passengers.  No other freight common carrier that is not a commuter railroad in the lower forty-eight even comes close to that.  Its passenger car fleet, much of which is glass-topped and traditional domes and is supplemented by tour operators and cruise lines’ cars in three different color schemes, is easily the most eclectic in the country.  And its freight operations are unique also – with its captive rail cars and only connections to the outside railroad world being weekly barges from Seattle and twice monthly from Prince Rupert.  Yet the railroad is impeccably modern with welded rail, diesels with AC traction motors, distributed power, and majestic bi-level passenger cars all dressed up in a beautiful blue and gold.  Alaska has always been a land of booms and busts.  Tourism is the latest boom and the now state owned Alaska Railroad has taken full advantage of that.  This program shows the trains and traffic including all scheduled passenger and freight trains on the Alaska Railroad between the ports of Seward and Whittier and Fairbanks with many trains set in the grandeur of the Bold Land that is Alaska filmed in late August and September of 2016.  Length = 79 minutes.  This DVD can be watched with or without narration. 

Perry, a county seat town in north-central Oklahoma, sixty-three miles north of Oklahoma City, is in a unique position on the sprawling BNSF system.  (Second commentary)  There, two important main lines run side by side through this town of 5100 residents – the north-south former Santa Fe Kansas City to Fort Worth and Galveston line  and the east-west former Saint Louis San Francisco or Frisco and later Burlington Northern Tulsa to Avard line.  Avard is ninety-three miles west of Perry where it connects with the BNSF Chicago to California Transcon and Tulsa is eighty-three miles east of Perry.  The two lines cross at Black Bear, six miles northeast of Perry.   After the BNSF merger connecting tracks were installed at Black Bear and Perry in order to allow westbounds from the hump classification yard in Tulsa to head south onto the former Santa Fe main at Black Bear and vice-versa.  The former Santa Fe line through Perry, BNSF’s present day Red Rock subdivision, has been an important trunk line since shortly after the Santa Fe took over the Gulf, Colorado, and Santa Fe in December of 1886 and opened a through route between Kansas City and Galveston.  Until 1973 the former Frisco line through Perry was a sleepy branch line with a train a day between Tulsa and junction of two branch lines and some of the largest terminal elevators in the wheat belt at Enid, thirty five miles west of Perry.  Then in 1973 the Santa Fe and Frisco moved their interchange point for transcontinental traffic from Floydada in the Texas Panhandle to Avard.  At that time heavier rail was installed and several sidings lengthened but the Avard branch or Avard subdivision as it is known today didn’t really come into its own until after the merger of the Santa Fe and Burlington Northern to form BNSF in 1995.   This program shows over twenty-four hours of action at Perry in April of 2016.  Length = 1 hour, 52 minutes.  This program can be watched with ot without narration.