At least five Alco-built diesel switchers line up at Ford Motor Co.’s Dearborn, Mich., plant. Did you really think the automaker would buy locomotives from rival General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division? Classic Trains collection […]
Alcos for Ford
‘Rail to Trail’
A stagecoach, steam locomotive, and F7 in Southern Pacific’s “black widow” paint scheme gather at a “Rail to Trail” pageant in Sacramento, Calif., celebrating the 100th anniversary of SP’s earliest predecessor, the Sacramento Valley Railroad, which began operation in 1856. Southern Pacific photo […]
Roger Williams: These Budds are for you, Providence
By the mid-1950s, the economic “Passenger Problem” was haunting U.S. railroads in a material way. In addition, older equipment continued to wear out and require replacement. Had this been a non-regulated business, that alone probably would have ended much of intercity passenger service, since there was no real prospect of making a return on investment. […]
Sharks on the Monongahela
Two Baldwin RF16 “Sharknose” diesels of the Monongahela Railroad lug a train of empty coal hoppers along the carrier’s namesake river at Alicia, Pa., in the late 1960s. The ex-New York Central units later went to the Delaware & Hudson and for decades have been privately owned and stored at Escanaba, Mich. David H. Hamley […]
Santa Fe’s celebrity PAs
Alco and Santa Fe pulled out all the stops when the road bought the first of the builder’s 2,000 h.p. postwar passenger diesels that came to be known as “PAs” (and “PBs” for booster units). Carrying ATSF road number 51, the brand-new three-unit locomotive heads a train down California’s Cajon Pass in October 1946. Santa […]
Panama Limited publicity photo
Two E6 diesels pose grandly with Illinois Central’s newly streamlined all-Pullman Panama Limited in an early-1940s publicity photo. Electro-Motive photo […]
RoadRailer service sails off into the sunset
A lot of diligent photographers were scattered along the old Wabash main line in Indiana and Illinois this past weekend to photograph the last runs of trains 255 and 256, the remnants of one of the most novel trains to ever grace American rails, Norfolk Southern’s Kansas City-Detroit RoadRailer service. What the fans were shooting […]
Amtrak North Coast Hiawatha service through the years
Amtrak North Coast Hiawatha service joined the Chicago to Seattle market as an unnamed, triweekly train on June 5, 1971. It obtained the North Coast Hiawatha name, a combination of Northern Pacific’s North Coast Limited and Milwaukee Road’s Hiawatha fleet, and Nos. 9-10, with the first Amtrak timetable issued on Nov. 14, 1971. It operated […]
Oil train on Cranberry Grade
Two 2-8-8-0 Mallets assist a train of oil-laden tank cars up Baltimore & Ohio’s 2.4-percent Cranberry Grade to Terra Alta, W.Va., in the early 1940s. The train has four of B&O’s distinctive “wagon top” cabooses, three of which presumably are deadheading. Classic Trains coll. […]
NYC’s Riley on the IC
New York Central’s Chicago–Cincinnati streamliner, the James Whitcomb Riley, speeds past Illinois Central’s suburban-train station at 75th Street on the South Side of Chicago in 1947. The Riley left from IC’s Central Station on the lakefront and switched to NYC rails at Kankakee. Willard A. Gardner photo […]
NH 4-6-4 with the Yankee Clipper
Streamlined class I-5 Hudson 1406 accelerates the 15 cars of the New Haven’s westbound Yankee Clipper away from New London, Conn., in March 1947. Kent W. Cochrane photo […]
Morning Zephyr in the snow
Burlington Route’s Chicago–Minneapolis Morning Zephyr forges west at Downers Grove, Ill., on a snowy January 13, 1948. The six-car train carries four dome cars, including a dome-observation. CB&Q photo […]
