CUMBERLAND, Md. — Western Maryland Scenic Railroad 2-6-6-2 No. 1309 is slated to return to operation beginning May 3, powering “Frostburg Flyer” excursions on Saturday and Sundays, the railroad said in an email to customers on Tuesday (April 8, 2025). Plans also call for the locomotive, built by Baldwin in 1949 for the Chesapeake & […]
It’s early morning in the rolling hills of North Carolina. The silence is broken by the shotgun sound of a steam locomotive. The engine, a hulking Baldwin decapod, is panting and straining against a heavy train of building supplies and coal empties, bound for the junction with the Alarka Branch a few miles distant. With […]
Baltimore & Ohio S-1 2-10-2 6149 descends the west side of the Allegheny Mountains at Keystone, Pa., after crossing the summit at Sand Patch on April 5, 1947. William P. Price photo […]
Facts and features Name: Green Bay Area Model Railroaders ClubScale: HO (1:87.1)Size: 26 x 68 feetPrototype: Green Bay Western, Chicago & North Western, and Milwaukee RoadLocale: Fox Valley, northeast WisconsinEra: 1950 to 1976Style: walkaroundMainline run: 2,000 feetMinimum radius: 42″Minimum turnout: No. 8 on mainlineMaximum grade: 3%Benchwork: Open gridHeight: 423∕4” to 491∕2“Roadbed: corkTrack: Atlas code 100 […]
Facts and features Name: Wheeling & Lake Erie Ry. Scale: HO (1:87.1)Size: 27 x 44 feet (in three rooms)Prototype: original W&LE Ry.Locale: southeastern Ohio, West VirginiaEra: 1957Style: linear walkaroundMainline run: 115 feetMinimum radius: 30″ (main), 24″ (industrial)Minimum turnout: No. 6 (main), No. 4 (steel mill)Maximum grade: 1.75%Benchwork: shelf Height: 551∕2” to 571∕2“Roadbed: HO and N […]
ATLANTA – Trains are rolling again on Norfolk Southern’s Heartland Corridor after flooding on the route in southern West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, southwest Virginia, and eastern Ohio due to a storm that began on Friday. Both main line tracks were operational as of midday today, NS said in a customer advisory. Service between Portsmouth, Ohio, […]
A deadly storm that that has brought significant flooding and other damage to at least five southeastern states has hit Norfolk Southern operations. CSX has also been impacted, although details are not currently available. An NS advisory of midday today informed intermodal customers that the route between Portsmouth, Ohio, and Bluefield, W.Va., is currently impassable, […]
Obsolete railcars are getting a reprieve from the scrapper’s torch to serve as vital road links in an area of North Carolina ravaged by Hurricane Helene. The North Carolina Department of Transportation and Innovative Bridge Co. are installing retired flatcars as a quick fix to temporarily replace road bridges damaged or destroyed by the storm […]
STEARNS, Ky. — McCreary County Heritage Foundation officials, owners of the Big South Fork Scenic Railway right-of-way, have confirmed the Jan. 28 derailment of a locomotive was the result of a runaway incident. No one was injured in the incident on the 14-mile tourist railway [see “Big South Fork Scenic locomotive derails …,” Trains News […]
I constructed my first N scale layout in a coffee table in 1976 based on the East Glasstop project railroad series that appeared in Model Railroader from December of 1970 to April of 1971. However, it was not until I retired in 2016 that I completed my second layout, a 5 x 5 foot square […]
Norfolk & Western class Z1b 2-6-6-2 1480 is at Norton, Va., in May 1952. A decent-sized engine by most standards, the Z1 was small in comparison to N&W’s class Y 2-8-8-2s and A 2-6-6-4s. Ed Theisinger photo […]
STEARNS, Ky. — A former Atlantic Coast Line EMD SW9 has been badly damaged in a light-engine derailment on Kentucky and Tennessee’s Big South Fork Scenic Railway. Aerial photos on the cover of the McCreary Journal, a southern Kentucky local newspaper, reveal a badly damaged EMD SW9 No. 106 derailed and resting against a mountainside […]
