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Dead (brake)men tell no tales
![A row of ropes hang from a crossbar on a telltale in front of a covered railroad bridge in a snowy landscape in Vermont](https://www.trains.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/MQB1222-01-telltales-before-Vermont-covered-bridge.jpg)
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The year was 1978, and I was an assistant roadmaster for the Burlington Northern out of Lincoln, Neb. Through February, the winter weather had been mild and dry, and I’d mostly been overseeing repairs to several sets of outfit cars used to house production gang workers. On the first Tuesday of March, however, a […]
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I became a railfan at age three, near the end of World War II. Awaiting the return of my naval officer father, I sat in our West Philadelphia kitchen window facing one of the busiest divisions of the Pennsylvania Railroad — the four-track electrified main line to Harrisburg. The parade of wartime tonnage, plus express […]
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A 2-8-8-2 assists a 4-8-2 on a special Denver & Rio Grande Western train carrying Civilian Conservation Corps workers climbing Tennessee Pass near Mitchell, Colo., in March 1940. R. H. Kindig photo […]
More than a few times, photographs in the Kalmbach library have sent me searching for railroads and places I’ve never encountered, and a few weeks ago some 8 x 10 prints lined up perfectly with travel plans. The destination: Mendocino, Calif., the charming old lumber town up the coast 155 miles from San Francisco. My […]