And when the Empire Builder is late it means the Borealis runs right behind it. And I finally got a close shot of a Dash 8-32BWH, with #518 taking the lead and P42DC #44 taking up the rear.

And one final shot, of the Empire Builder departing St Paul and passing Imniza Ska. Amtrak is making pretty quick progress painting Superliners in Phase VII, but the fleet is still pretty patchy.

A little bit earlier, here's the engineer boarding the locomotive after throwing the first switch, with the UMN Transitway bridge blocking part of the view.

Once thrown the train can snake its way through the Minnesota Commercial's yard and onto the old Milwaukee Road Short Line. P42DC #5 will celebrate its 30th birthday this month.

Already 2 hours late, today's Empire Builder has come to a complete stop for the second time in just a few minutes. This allows the engineer to disembark and hand throw the last switch needed to route them from the BNSF onto the Minnesota Commercial, which will take them to St Paul Union Depot.

Dude you're defending nonconsensual image generation with a tedious "free speech" argument, of course people are reacting badly. The other laws have failed, this law fills those holes and doesn't restrict any speech worth defending.

Look at this amazing theater in Rockdale! Built from a quonset hut, so it'd be easy to kitbash. commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ka...

Considering all of the terrible things GPT-4o caused this ad feels a bit insensitive

And a few minutes later, just after the sun had slipped below the horizon, a ship arrived! Unfortunately it was the tug/barge combo 𝘚𝘦𝘢 𝘌𝘢𝘨𝘭𝘦 𝘐𝘐 and 𝘚𝘵. 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘺𝘴 𝘊𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘐𝘐 , one of the ugliest ships on the Great Lakes. Here they are being helped into the Rouge River by the tug 𝘕𝘦𝘸 𝘠𝘰𝘳𝘬.

The brand-new Gordie Howe bridge shines in the sunset on June 22, 2026. In the distance the Ambassador Bridge can be seen, packed full of trucks, with the Detroit skyline in the distance. Taken from Belanger Park in River Rouge with my S5.

Hey Minnesotans if you have a few minutes join me in contacting Tina Smith and asking her to retract her support of Graham Platner.

And the factoring for health care is laughable. I have a crappy plan and I still stay under like $5k a year! Yeah it'd go up with kids, but are you planning for the kids to break multiple bones every year????

Cloquet Terminal Railroad SW1000 #35 moves cut of cars at the Sappi paper mill in Cloquet under an overcast sky. This locomotive was originally built for the Duluth and Northeastern Railroad and has worked this mill its whole life. Taken October 22 2025 on my S5.

Yesterday the South Shore Line restarted service on both sides of the derailment, bussing passengers around the wreck. Here a string of ex-Metra Highliner IIs are traveling westbound near Town of Pines IN, past the place where the ill-fated empty coal train departed the day before.

Home now with access to my reference collection. Here's what Frank King's The Missabe Road has to say about it. I'm guessing that the 160hp GM engine was a Detroit Diesel 4-71.

A rest stop in rural Wisconsin isn't a place I'd expect to see a rainbow flag flying for Pride, but it's neat to see!

The National Parks are fragile places with limited capacity, and attempts to control attendance, especially with the chronic understaffing, are not "evil".

It's a beautiful evening on the Detroit River and the lights on the Gordie Howe Bridge are already broken 🙃

Post inspired by the stellar California-style burrito I just ate at Taqueria El Ray here in Detroit.

It is a really incredible thing to see, and I highly recommend traveling to see it. Who knows how much longer they'll be doing it.

Once it's all finished the crew can upload and reload for the next journey. Here's my car coming off of the ship.

The ship also has 4 engine telegrams to communicate between the Captain and the engine room. There are two on the bridge, and two here in the aft pilot house, where the Captain pilots the vessel while docking.

But the 𝘉𝘢𝘥𝘨𝘦𝘳 has no mechanical aids. They maneuver into the dock by dropping an anchor to slow the bow, then using the two engines to swing the rear around. In the third shot you can see how the port (L) propeller is pushing forward while the starboard (R) propeller is pushing backwards.

On most vessels, especially on the Great Lakes, they will be fitted with various devices to make docking easier. This sequence shows the MV 𝘌𝘥𝘸𝘪𝘯 𝘏. 𝘎𝘰𝘵𝘵 using its bow thruster to easily pirouette into the ore dock at Two Harbors MN back in 2023.

On Monday I started my vacation in a very fun way by taking the SS 𝘉𝘢𝘥𝘨𝘦𝘳 across Lake Michigan. It was way more fun than sitting in Chicago. But what impressed me most about the journey was something I don't think I've seen anyone cover- the way they maneuver the ship into the slip.

Come on little storm you can do it

Plus another cool thing, near the town of Eveleth is an overlook where you can actually see inside the Thunderbird Mine and watch them dig out the ore. Here a Komatsu PC5500 excavator is working with a haul truck to clear overburden that was blasted out the previous day.

And yes, remarkably, those are old DMIR ore jennies, still in service in 2026. Car #49343 will celebrate its 78th birthday this month! And this is one of the last places to see cars in revenue service with ACI tags, since we are almost 50 years past the 1977 abandonment of the system.

Last week I was able to capture a very interesting rail operation on the CN. The Thunderbird Mine and the Fairlane Taconite Plant sit about 9 miles apart as the crow flies, and the CN is used to deliver the raw iron ore. On May 29 I caught AC44C6Ms #3316 and #3324 leading this shuttle train.

Having a Nazi symbol tattooed on your chest makes you antisemitic. No matter who you are or what you say, until you've completed a very very very long process of making things right. Why is this hard to understand.