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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A Special Wish garden railway project

A Special Wish garden railway project

Special note: All photos courtesy of Aileen Elizabeth Photography For many, garden railways are a unique hobby, but for Jack, a garden railway was a “special wish.” A Special Wish Foundation, North Central Ohio Chapter (“Special Wish”), is a non-profit charitable organization dedicated to granting the wishes of children under the age of twenty-one who […]

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Vol. 311 “Biggest Bridges”

Long steel bridge in a prairie landscape.

This “Trackside with Trains” photo contest comes from August 2017. The theme was “Biggest Bridges”. Trackside with Trains was a regular, periodic contest among Trains website visitors from the earlier 2000s until October 2018. Anyone in the world who wanted to participate, could, and with rare exception, have their images judged by viewers with results […]

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