When Al Kalmbach published the first issue of Trains in November 1940, the company’s home state of Wisconsin boasted 6,675 route-miles of railroad, a total that had peaked at 7,500 two decades earlier and was declining. Lingering effects from the Great Depression kept the state’s three largest railroads in bankruptcy — Chicago & North Western, […]
Iowa has been the poster-child state for the overbuilding of railways in the era before paved roads. In his “Iowa: Half Its Trains Don’t Go There Anymore” [April 1986 Trains], author Charles Bohi said Hawkeye State kids were taught “there is no point in Iowa more than 12 miles from a railroad” (a day’s drive […]
This map reflects an average day for the Union Pacific Railroad in late 2003. Trains per line per day is indicated above each major line segment except where data is not available. These numbers have changed little since our previous UP trains-per-day map in the November 2001 issue, except for the Sunset Route between West […]
Passengers enter Los Angeles Union Station during the 2009 winter holidays. Railroads continue to play an important – and growing – role in California’s well-patronized public transportation. Scott Lothes Shadowed by the Vincent Thomas Bridge, doublestacked containers rest in the hold yard outside of APL’s Global Gateway South Terminal located within the Port of Los […]
What have the mergers that built today’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe system accomplished? It’s important to ask this question, because it predicts where BNSF might be headed in the future. In basic terms, mergers have four outcomes. Strategic mergers create seamless service in new or existing traffic lanes and open new markets. Tactical mergers reduce […]
This map has been almost 25 years in coming. As soon as Conrail was formed in 1976, Trains readers began requesting a huge “breakdown” map of Conrail coded to predecessor railroads. The project was too big for the limited resources then available to us. Thanks to Curt Richards, though, we now have a good source […]
Compared here are the world’s most important main lines across the most important freight territory on earth, at a time when railroads were the most important of man’s technologies, 1927. These four main lines were the Trunk Lines, a title originally given to any important main line between two great cities, but later reserved almost […]
The New Haven’s heavy passenger orientation is obvious, especially on the New York-Boston Shore Line. On the electrified West End, torrents of commuters flowed in and out of New York’s Grand Central Terminal. Some intercity runs used GCT too, while a relative handful of trains bound to and from points west of New York used […]
This is a snapshot of traffic across the Continental Divide in 1980 and 2000 on U.S. transcontinental routes. It’s inherent in map-making that accuracy gets sacrificed on the altar of clarity: traffic density is by no means uniform across the shaded line segments, and a slightly different picture would emerge were the snapshots taken in […]
Coal is the No. 1 rail-shipped commodity by tonnage in the U.S., and power plants consume most of it. Three key characteristics shape this map (see June 2002 Trains for the East, and January 2003 for the South): Population is concentrated in cities; most plants are mine-mouth or near the mine; and its most populous […]
Fox Valley Models N scale ES44AC diesel locomotive A General Electric ES44AC is the debut locomotive from Fox Valley Models. The direct-current ready-to-run N scale model, based on GE’s Evolution Series locomotive, uses a split-frame mechanism and features numerous railroad-specific details. A package of modeler- installed etched-metal and wire details is also included. The GE […]
Bachmann On2½ Mallet 2-6-6-2 Featuring a Tsunami Digital Command Control (DCC) sound decoder, this new On21/2 articulated locomotive is fun to operate. The dual-mode decoder provides realistic sound effects on DC and DCC layouts. This highly detailed steam locomotive model is part of Bachmann’s top-of-the-line Spectrum series. Logging Mallets. Many narrow gauge railroads used articulated […]
