Nostalgia & History > Burlington Northern VS Mother Nature

We all know that in life, it is a constant battle to preserve infrastructure from the ravages of nature. Burlington Northern had its own method of keeping brush and weeds under control.  Every spring they would run a spray train and basically kill anything within 50 feet of the rail.  We were told by maintenance that it was Paraquat.  The result was a rather homely looking right of way as evidenced by this image.  This is Burlington Northern train 3 which departed Chicago early in the afternoon, seven days a week.  In the eighties, if you were out shooting pictures around Savanna, Ill, you were guaranteed four westbound trains, with perfect lighting, in the late afternoon.  BN would send #3 and #13 out of Cicero and the Milwaukee Road would send #226 and #228  westbound out of Bensenville.  They would all converge around Savanna, within a couple of hours, in the early evening.  In those years, the preferred power for BN was a pair of SD40-2's and a GE B30-7A  ( as we called it, two 40's and a B)

BN train 3 approaching the ESS at Burke (east of Savanna, Illinois)  May 1988

Thanks for looking.
Dave

---

Right of way looks good to me.....get rid of those weeds....do they still do this today or did the tree huggers piss and moan about it? 

summer of 1988 = no rain everywhere = drought :-(  dave, out.

bluesboyst Wrote:
....get rid of those
> weeds....do they still do this today or did the

I doubt it.Because they kept the R/W clear
out to the pole line.They no longer have pole lines.
Most places I have been/seen the bushes  rub the
cars or locomotives.
There are places on CSX Florida main that all
you see are trees.

Uncle Joe
Seffner,Fl.