Lehigh Valley mail car

Lehigh Valley Railway Post Office car

Workers transfer mail between a Post Office Department truck and a Lehigh Valley Railway Post Office car around 1910. The 60-foot, all-steel RPO is state of the art, unlike the ancient wooden, open-platform car to its left. Library of Congress photo […]

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Classic Frisco

St. Louis-San Francisco Railway 4-8-2s near Oklahoma City

One of the St. Louis-San Francisco’s beautiful 1500-series 4-8-2s swings through a reverse curve about 20 miles east of Oklahoma City with the Meteor from St. Louis in October 1946. Preston George photo […]

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A 4-4-0 in 1952

Chicago and Illinois Midland Railway in Hill Top, Illinois

Chicago & Illinois Midland 4-4-0 No. 500, built by Baldwin at the late date of 1927, pulls away from Hill Top, Ill., with the daily-except-Sunday train from Pekin to Springfield, Ill. The date is May 20, 1952 — late in the game indeed for American types on Class I railroads. Ed Theisinger photo […]

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GM&O’s “Plug”

Gulf Mobile and Ohio Railroad at Chicago Union Station

Gulf, Mobile & Ohio F3 883-A leads the road’s weekday commuter train to Joliet away from Chicago Union Station not long before GM&O merged with Illinois Central to form Illinois Central Gulf. The little train was widely known as “The Plug.” John R. Taibi photo […]

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Stalled on Kirkwood Hill

Missouri Pacific Railroad Kirkwood Hill

Greasy rails on Missouri Pacific’s Kirkwood Hill west of St. Louis have brought 2-10-2 helper No. 1716 and 4-8-4 road engine No. 2111 to a halt in March 1946. The train got moving again with an assist from an 0-8-0. Joe Collias photo […]

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GTW 4-8-4 on a freight

Grand Trunk Western Railroad 4-8-4 in Indiana

Grand Trunk Western 4-8-4 6317 approaches South Bend (Ind.) Union Station with a westbound freight in April 1948. A dozen years later, GTW would become one of the final Class I railroads to use steam power. Andrew Corsini photo […]

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C&NW steam excursion

Steam Chicago & North Western locomotives with passenger train

Chicago & North Western class D 4-4-2 395 and 4-6-2 647 head west through a cut at Wales, Wis., with an excursion train on a triangular Chicago–Milwaukee–Madison–Chicago routing in September 1954. Philip R. Hastings photo […]

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Super-Power citadel

Lima Locomotive Works plant

The Lima Locomotive Works plant in Lima, Ohio, birthplace of hundreds of advanced “Super-Power” steam locomotives, occupied a triangular site on the city’s south side between B&O and Nickel Plate lines. Classic Trains coll. […]

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Sumpter Valley Malley

Sumpter Valley Railroad 2-6-6-2 Mallet

2-6-6-2 Mallet No. 250 of the 3-foot-gauge Sumpter Valley Railway in northeast Oregon rolls a train of lumber toward the Union Pacific interchange at Baker, Ore., in 1946. The SV was abandoned in 1948, but a portion has been revived as a museum and tourist railway. Henry R. Griffiths photo […]

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NKP Berkshire making time

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The Nickel Plate carried a lot of meat traffic from Chicago and other cities. Here, Berkshire No. 776, with two Swift cars at the head end, rushes a long string of meat reefers east near Vermilion, Ohio, in 1957. H. S. Ludlow photo […]

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