The small town of Odin, 66 miles east of St. Louis, retains its old time railroad flavor.  Odin is where the Illinois Central's main line via Centralia crosses CSX's former B&O line to St. Louis.  The number of trains through Odin has grown recently and changes are coming on CSX.  This video shows all of the trains through Odin for 24 hours in the fall of 1997.  98 minutes. 

The former Santa Fe, now BNSF, route between Chicago and Kansas City has long been known as the Airline because it is the straightest and fastest rail line between those two rail centers.  No other railroad has such an fleet of hot trains.  This tape shows 24 hours of awesome action on the airline in Sept. 1997 east of Fort Madison in west central Illinois.  83 minutes. 

Watseka, 77 miles south of Chicago, is where the UP's line to Texas crosses the TP&W.  The CSX trains from Chicago to the Southeast and CP trains to Louisville have trackage rights on the UP to Woodland Jct. 5 miles to the south.  As many as 50 trains hammer the diamonds at Watseka.  This video shows 24 hours of action at Watseka and Woodland Jct. in Sept. 1997.  Watseka deserves to be called a Hot Spot as it was in Trains Magazine.  110 minutes. 

This videotape shows the trains and operations on five regional railroads in the Midwest in the fall of 1997. This tape is a last look at the Chicago, Central, & Pacific which was recently reacquired by the IC, and a 1st look at the five month old I&M Rail Link.  We caught quite a few trains on the other 3 Midwest regionals - the Toledo, Peoria, and Western, Iowa Interstate, and Dakota, Minnesota, and Eastern.  There were many 1st generation units on these railroads including two Alcos.  132 minutes.