Hello everyone, and welcome to the town of Olathe, Kansas. Located about a half-hour west of Kansas City, Olathe is part of the ever-sprawling Kansas City metropolitan area and one of the largest cities in Eastern Kansas. In addition, Olathe features the iconic BNSF Southern Transcon (the mainline of the Atchinson, Topeka, and Santa Fe) near its downtown, and as such is a top railfanning location in this side of Kansas. Each day, Olathe sees between 50-60 trains per day with a great variety of manifest, grain, intermodal, and of course, the famed BNSF Z-trains.

I drove down to Olathe on my second full day in Kansas as a continuation of my railfanning adventure on the Santa Fe Mainline. Between noon and 7 p.m., I had possibly my best day in terms of BNSF action with over 20 train in that time period and a number of cool catches to compliment the action. A fun fact for all of you who may want to check out Olathe; just north of downtown is a public park along the tracks named Fairview Park. This park offers a pretty fair view of the train tracks (sorry for the bad pun) and provides a small parking lot, a couple of benches, and a public restroom. With all that, this park in Olathe gives the railfan a prime opportunity to have a picnic while watching the trains.

As for the action, today's railfanning session kicked off with a couple of eastbound Z-trains going a bit slower than normal due to trackwork taking place that morning. Around an hour after I got there, BNSF opened the floodgates and began allowing trains in both directions. The third train of the day was a westbound grain train with the first great catch of the day in BNSF Warbonnet 778. The locomotive looked very clean and while I am obviously partial to the true Warbonnets (the ATSF ones), I appreciate the BNSF Warbonnets for adding diversity and style to the BNSF fleet.

After two more Z-trains, including one in a meet with the westbound grain train, the second great catch of the afternoon came in the form of the first manifest train of the day with a Canadian Pacific and a Kansas City Southern locomotive. This marked the third locomotive of each railroad I have seen on this trip, and this manifest train was the first three manifest over the next couple of hours. Grain trains and manifest trains dominated the middle part of this afternoon of railfanning, with the lone exception being a westbound ballast train with a BNSF H1 unit serving as rear DPU. This is my second H1 locomotive of this trip, and like the BNSF Warbonnet, I like these H1 locomotives thanks to their unique paint scheme that spices up the BNSF locomotive fleet.

After a light-power move came by, BNSF sent four high-priority trains through Olathe before returning to manifest and unit train traffic. A trio of Z-trains in each direction followed up the first autorack train on the afternoon, and a grain train pulled through with the second Canadian Pacific locomotive of the day. The three consecutive Z-trains coming through is a very common sight here on the Transcon, particularly in the eastern half of this iconic BNSF mainline. For that matter, two out of five trains on the Southern Transcon are Z-trains. Following the Z-trains and the grain train, the third great catch of the day came in the form of a Ferromex SD70ACe, the second of which I have seen thus far on the trip. Ferromex locomotives are rare where I typically railfan, as they do not frequent east of the Mississippi. Thus, I treat seeing one of these locomotives like I am seeing a heritage unit considering how uncommon they are on NS and CSX rails.

The evening portion of my day of railfanning kicked off with perhaps my favorite catch of the day of all the ones I have mentioned; a Burlington Northern green caboose on the local train. BNSF still continues to use the caboose fleets from their predecessor railroads and keep them in action, as is evident here on the evening local train. Seeing the BN caboose was a real treat especially one in decent shape aside from the graffiti. Following the Burlington Northern caboose and local special was an autorack as well as the fourth and final notable catch; a second BNSF Warbonnet on the last westbound train of the day.

All-in-all, this was a busy and noteworthy afternoon of railfanning, and a great first visit in Olathe. Two BNSF Warbonnets, a Ferromex locomotive, a Burlington Northern caboose, and a KCS Southern Belle all made for a great day of railfanning on the BNSF Southern Transcon. A memorable day for sure, but believe it or not, this was not even my best day yet of railfanning while I was here in Kansas. Stay tuned for my next upcoming video from Emporia, Kansas, also along the BNSF Southern Transcon, to see what I consider to be my best day of railfanning while in Kansas.

Thanks for watching, and I hope you enjoy the video!

-N&W475.

P.S. please excuse the audio quality in a few parts of this video, not sure why it came out subpar. Hope you enjoy regardless!