Fellow railfan Cooper Smith and I spent July 23, 2021, trackside chasing trains in Western Kentucky and southern Illinois. As part of the trip we sat at Mt. Vernon, Illinois for about 4 hours waiting on trains to come over the diamonds here and finally we caught a NS over the diamond heading north and for this shot of Union Pacific MSMPB I decided to move to a crossing north of the MOW office as the sun was dropping to the horizon and I thought the light would help make the shot! Both trains showed up within 15 minutes of each other, so it was worth the wait!

The main reason we waited so long was that it meant that we were able to capture 5 different railroads in operation on our trip! We caught Paducah and Louisville Railway, BNSF, CN, NS and Union Pacific, with an Eastern Main Unit dead in tow! While we had to wait a boring 4 hours for the last two roads, it still made for a great day trackside!

Tech Info: Nikon D800, RAW, Nikon 70-300mm @ 170mm, f/5, 1/800, ISO 320.