Night at the Power Plant
I thought I’d deviate from the Post Offices for once, and add to the “In the Three Oh Nine” series. This is the E.D. Edwards Generating Station south of Bartonville, IL along the Illinois River. It’s a 749 Megawatt coal fired power plant belonging to AmerenCilco, the local utility. Feeding the burners at Edwards Station [...]
Centralia Crew Change
I spent some time in Centralia, IL over the weekend. The town of Centralia hosts three railroad mainlines, all of which bisect the downtown district on a shared alignment. The BNSF’s former CB&Q southern Illinois coal route snakes through town, sharing track with the Norfolk Southern and crossing the Canadian National on the south end [...]
Broken Clouds
The sun peeks in and out of some high broken clouds over the Illinois prairie as a BNSF coal load rolls towards Chicago and eventually on to Michigan for its date with the burners of a Detroit Edison power plant. I used to pass up on days like this, in favor of only completely sunny [...]
Getting Lucky With the Lighting
Sometimes you really plan out the lighting in a photo, getting your lights set up just so, adjusting and adjusting, and still everything fails (haha). And sometimes, you don’t set up any lights, spend no time at all adjusting anything, and everything just works. Such it was on Labor Day evening, as I was setting [...]
On the Calumet
Last night, while heading for a dark spot to shoot the meteor shower that never really happened, I was crossing the Chicago Skyway bridge over the Calumet River when I spied a lake boat tied up at the KCBX coal transload facility. With just enough light left in the sky to pull of some neat [...]
