Cinerama Rides the California Zephyr

Read about the California Zephyr‘s role in the 1955 widescreen movie Cinerama Holiday in “When Cinerama Rode the C.Z.,” an article from Classic Trains Special Edition No. 1, Dream Trains (2003). Download the story by clicking here. Watch the original remastered Cinerama Holiday trailer. Keep an eye out for the C.Z. at about 3 min […]

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An accidental beginning

SP 4229

SP 4229, the cab-forward on which author Anderson was firing as the second engine of a doubleheader when lead engine 4208 threw a rod, hauls L.A.-bound freight 766 up Casamilia Hill on the Coast Line in 1947. Jim Morley As an 18-year-old kid going firing on Southern Pacific’s Coast Division in 1953, my life was […]

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Railroading in Maine at 40 below zero

BAR-W-Seboois

Five years after author Dow’s Bangor & Aroostook experience, in March 1955, a 103-car freight waits at snowy West Seboois, Maine, for a meet with the Aroostook Flyer. Allen A. Sharp The temperature on that February 1950 morning at Oakfield, Maine, was a savage 40 degrees below zero. The sky was clear, with little or […]

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Author, traveler George H. Drury dies NEWSWIRE

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Drury at work at Kalmbach. Kalmbach Publishing Co. MILWAUKEE – Author and former Kalmbach Publishing Co. employee George H. Drury died June 21 at age 73 after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease. A native of Reading, Mass., and lifelong rail enthusiast, Drury was working in San Francisco when he was hired as a copy […]

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Policing the Olympian Hi

MILW Skytop

Models posed in the lounge of a Milwaukee Road Skytop sleeper-observation car appear to be better behaved than some of the soldiers who rode the Olympian Hiawatha after the Korean War. Milwaukee Road When the Korean conflict was halted by a truce in 1953, there was a rush to get most of our troops home. […]

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A busy night at Hinton

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In the Summer 2013 issue of Classic Trains, author Bob Withers recounts the special movement of passenger cars to Cass, W.Va., in late May 1968 on the occasion of the extension of the tourist pike to the top of Bald Knob. It was a complex operation involving scheduled and extra trains, as he explains here. […]

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