GG1 to the rescue

20160201

Amtrak E60CH 966 on the Washington-bound Murray Hill has become disabled just south of Bowie, Md., on March 26, 1976. Sent out to rescue the one-year-old motor is Penn Central GG1 4885 — a 37-year veteran of the Northeast Corridor. Ray Brubacker photo […]

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Classic logging Mallet

20160212

The 2-6-6-2T Mallet, exemplified by Weyerhauser No. 9, was perhaps the ultimate development of the logging locomotive. Compact, powerful, and flexible, the type was ideally suited to pulling heavy loads over rough, sharply curved track. Geared locomotives like the Shay also possessed these traits, but could not make the speed of a rod engine. Baldwin […]

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B&O “Dockside” 0-4-0T

20160210

Baltimore & Ohio No. 9 is one of four class C-16 0-4-0T switchers built in 1912 to work tight-radius street trackage along Baltimore harbor. Two were rebuilt as tender engines in the 1920s, but the other two worked as-built until several years after World War II. Their compact size made them a favorite among HO […]

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Rock Island 4-8-4 at Joliet

Steam locomotive with freight train

Rock Island class R-67 Northern 5114 has just passed Joliet (Ill.) Union Station and crossed the GM&O/ATSF diamond as it steams toward Chicago with an eastbound freight in fall 1951. Wallace W. Abbey photo […]

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Reading Pacific on the PRSL

20151210

Characteristic of the indignities suffered by steam in its final years, Reading G-3 Pacific 215, built in 1948 as a top-flight passenger engine, loafs along with a single coach on the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines in September 1955. Philip R. Hastings photo […]

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Quiet Sunday on the DT&I

20151202

Mikados, an 0-8-0, and an ex-Pennsylvania Railroad Consolidation are arrayed around the turntable at Detroit, Toledo & Ironton’s Flat Rock Yard near Detroit on the day before Labor Day, 1955. Philip R. Hastings photo […]

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Icing the reefers on the CB&Q

20151216

A worker shovels salt into a reefer via a rolling chute at the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy’s icing dock in Denver in 1949. The conveyor chain on the platform at right carries block ice along the platform. Earl Cochran photo […]

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Dallas interlocking tower

20151222

An interior view at Tower 19 near Dallas (Texas) Union Terminal shows the track diagram (“model board”) of the territory controlled by the tower and some of the levers that controlled the switches and signals. This is an electro-pneumatic interlocking, in which switches are operated by compressed air. Historic American Engineering Record photo […]

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