Runner Up: Matt Csenge
Deep below the streets of Jersey City, NJ Transit trains rumble back and forth through the Bergen Tunnels, to and from Hoboken Terminal. The 4,200-foot-long tunnels cut through Bergen Hill, the southernmost end of the Hudson Palisades, with two large open-cut ventilation shafts along the way. GP40PH-2B 4208, the railroad’s Conrail heritage unit, is shoving non-revenue Train X132 through the north tunnel on Track 1 on June 12, 2025.
Runner Up: Eric Williams
On November 6, 2024, an empty CPKC potash train crosses the Snake River over Union Pacific’s massive Joso High Bridge, located near Lyons Ferry, Wash. This train is returning to Canada and is handled by UP crews as part of the UP/CPKC alliance called the Pacific Can-Am Corridor.
Runner Up: Eric R. Grover
After stopping at North Conway, N.H., Conway Scenic Extra 7470 is waiting for its conductor to finish getting instructions. This scene was staged as part of the railroad’s September 2014 Railfan Weekend photo shoot.
Runner Up: Daniel Spitzer
Only on the longest days of summer, when the sun sets far to the north, does light burnish the north side of the century-old Bear Mountain Bridge and the trains that pass below. Metro-North recently painted P42 211 in heritage New York Central livery, which leads a northbound late afternoon express along the Hudson River near Fort Montgomery, N.Y., on June 19, 2025.
Runner Up: James R. Doughty
UP ES44AC 7942 leads the IG4SE-04 past the approach signal at mile 280.6 between Minidoka and Adelaide along the Nampa Subdivision in Southern Idaho. Snow covers the Deep Creek Mountains on this cold February 5, 2025, at 2:56 p.m.
Third Place: Al Crossley
Birds swoop as D&RGW Train 150, with a mix of Rio Grande, Burlington Northern, and Southern Pacific power, heads south (railroad east) near Leadville, Colo., at 6:25pm on June 15, 1989. Caboose 01425 does the honors on the marker end.
Second Place: Dan Kwaciany
It’s hard to beat the view from Milwaukee Road’s Skytop observation car Cedar Rapids. The Friends of 261 had just wrapped up its first trip between Minneapolis and Duluth, Minn., on May 12, 2013, using Milwaukee Road 4-8-4 261 after a five-year hiatus while the locomotive underwent its required 15-year inspection. Once the train returned to Minneapolis, the crew cut the locomotive from the head end and parked behind the train so offloading passengers could get one final look at the big Northern.