Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis considered its 52 F3 and F7 units (32 cabs, 20 boosters) to be dual service locomotives, although only the B units had steam generators. Linn H. Westcott photo […]
NC&StL F units
N&W 0-8-0 boiler
Norfolk & Western built 0-8-0 switchers until 1953, the last conventional steam locomotives built for U.S. service. Devoid of all fittings, a new 0-8-0 boiler is upside down at N&W’s Roanoke, Va., shops. W. A. Akin Jr. photo […]
Budd Slumbercoaches
Budd Slumbercoaches were born of a desire to serve budget-conscious leisure travelers in the mid-20th century. As economic conditions improved during the 1920s and more people could afford to travel, there was demand for a less costly but more comfortable means of travel, particularly for the long-haul routes between Midwest and West Coast […]
L&N at Ashley, Ill.
Louisville & Nashville train 92 between Nashville, Tenn., and St. Louis pulls into the old depot at Ashley, Ill., in September 1957. An FP7 and a Geep head the all-heavyweight consist of several head-end cars and two coaches. Jim Shaughnessy photo […]
Hudson on the Hiawatha
One of the Milwaukee Road’s dashing F7 4-6-4s accelerates the Hiawatha out of Chicago at the start of the streamliner’s run to Minneapolis on a winter day in 1939. Alfred W. Johnson photo […]
Classic Trains, Winter 2024
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GM&O GP35s
Gulf, Mobile & Ohio traded in its Alco FA units on EMD GP30s and GP35, which came from La Grange with the AAR Type B trucks from the FAs. F. Axtell Kramer Jr. photo […]
Freights meet on the Nickel Plate
In September 1954 at New Douglas, Ill., on the Nickel Plate Road’s old Clover Leaf line to St. Louis, 2-8-4 703 on westbound freight 49 holds the siding as the caboose of eastbound 98 speeds past on the main. Philip R. Hastings photo […]
Brightline conjures the glory of Florida East Coast passenger trains
When I fell into the mileage hobby more than 35 years ago, I was late to the game but ambitious to mark up as much of my Rand McNally Handy Railroad Atlas as possible. This was around 1987, when my boss, J. David Ingles, inspired me to keep track of everything I rode, something I […]
Fast Mail at Chicago Union Station
Workers at Chicago Union Station load mail aboard Burlington Route train 29 — the Fast Mail — prior to its 9 p.m. departure for Omaha in early 1964. John Gruber photo […]
The ‘Wabash 50’
Few, if any railroads, duplicated what the Wabash Railroad did in 1930 and ’31 when it ordered 50 big locomotives from the Baldwin Locomotive Co., split half and half between the tried-and-true 4-8-2 wheel Mountain type and the still relatively new 4-8-4 Northern. It was a remarkable decision, given the slight differences between the […]
Illinois Terminal Railroad: Road of many manifestations
The Illinois Terminal Railroad might be one of the most misunderstood Class 1 railroads of the 20th century. If you think “the I.T.,” as most called it, was just a creaky electric interurban that gave up on passengers and got some diesels to haul freight to a few customers, think again. Illinois Terminal was […]
