Aircraft Over-Flies the GM&O

Take a complete tour of the GM&O from these aerial films shot by a railfan riding shotgun in a helicopter!

A Railfan Trip on the GM&O

Our intrepid railfan grabbed his movie camera and headed out for a day foaming the GM&O along U.S. Route 66. Working between Lincoln and Springfield he caught several GM&O freights plying the line between Elkhart and the Sangamon River! All videos on this page are in .mov format and should be viewable by most viewer softwre.

First up is GM&O #33, led by a four-unit lash-up of brand new GP-38's. 33 is making its way southward toward Elkhart and ultimately for its morning call at Ridgely Yard in Springfield.	Train #33 was moving slow enough to allow us to catch up with the train in the cut just north of the Sangamon River bridge near Sherman, Illinois.
We decided to hang out here after we noticed the northbound signal clear up a few minutes after #33 went past and were surprised to find #94 on its way to Chicago from Kansas City. #94 left K.C. the previous evening at 7:00 p.m. and made connections at Roodhouse to set off cars for St. Louis. #94 is considered a hot manifest freight and is rarely delayed but today is an exception!	After #94 rolled by the signal cleared up again and soon a lash-up of classic GM&O F-units clattered across the Sangamon River Bridge with a one-car train. We weren't able to identify this train. No flags were displayed so this train may have been #92 the second Kansas City - Chicago freight.
#92 was such an interesting little train, which really surprised us that it wasn't annulled with only one car. Whatever is in that tanker must be a high-priority shipment to merit paying a crew to move one car over the division! Apparently truck drivers must have railfans in their realms as the drives of a Consolidated Freightways and an ICX truck both stopped to witness the passage of #92...