So on Saturday I headed south along US route 45 to Tolono, this is about 8 miles south of Champaign. Route 45 parallels the railway all the way there.
At Tolono, the Illinois Central mainline is crossed by the Norfolk Southern Decatur (pronounced DeKayTor) to the west of Tolono to Danville line to the east. So in theory there should be quite few more trains than there is in Champaign.
I arrived at about 8:30 and parked up near the grain elevator by a level crossing over the NS line, unfortunately no train arrived on any lines until about 10am, when this coal train arrived on the ILC.
On the back was this
Looking east the 4 tracks from left to right are, the main siding (ie passing loop), the main line, a loop for the grain elevator and a spur with the buffer stop. If you look on google maps you will see that there appears to be an east to south connector, but this has been blocked off, it is the same with the west to north and the east to north has been removed completely.
The grain elevator would make a nice model.
I drove round the village looking for a better spot and found 3 other cars parked up by the crossing, that was where the local rail fans went, but local by american standards tend to mean anyone from less than 3 hours away !
The action started to pickup another north bound manifest arrived, I took a video of that, then this arrived and parked up in the ILC siding to the south of the crossing
And this arrived on the NS line
Both were clearly waiting for something else to pass, it turned out to be Amtrak