In June 1949, my friend Bob Wagner and I decided to head from our Los Angels-area homes for the Owens Valley in eastern central California to see, and hopefully ride, Southern Pacific’s former Carson & Colorado narrow gauge, which still operated with steam power 70 miles between Keeler and Laws. We got a late start […]
The gift By Curtis L.Katz I have always been fascinated with trains. My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Bannister, a grandmotherly woman wiry and wise, once told my mother that most little children go through a phase when they are interested in trains or ships or trucks, “but with Curtis, trains are a hobby.” Had my 5-yeard-old […]
When I read Rev. Richard Anderson’s account in the Summer 2000 Classic Trains [pages 93-95] of his travels on the Rock Island, I was filled with nostalgia. His description of boarding the woebegone Cherokee at 2:45 a.m. at Little Rock got me thinking back to my own experiences with the Rock Island in the Arkansas […]
I hired out in 1944 with the Santa Fe as an agent/operator apprentice and in August was assigned to the agent/operator pool. In about a year I was 26th up from the bottom of the list, so I was able to successfully bid on some openings. One night in about 1946, I was working relief […]
During my career as an engineman on the Southern Pacific, I ran and fired locomotives carrying from 185 to 300 psi of superheated steam. The engine in this story was a 3700-class 2-10-2 which carried 200 psi of steam at 510 degrees F. Every road locomotive had two water glasses, one on the engineer’s side […]
The year was 1966; I was 19 years old and starting my second summer working on the Great Lakes. This year I was called to be a deckhand on the Leon Falk Jr. of the Hanna fleet. At 730 feet overall, she was one of the largest boats on the Great Lakes, and could haul […]
The end of the 19th century marked the beginning of a conservation movement in America. Naturalists and environmentalists lobbied the United States government to set aside vast areas of wilderness in the American West as national parks. Growing public awareness and support for the idea prompted Congress to pass the National Park Service Act, which […]
In the Fall 2001 issue of Classic Trains magazine, Senior Editor Dave Ingles recounts his train trip to and from Denver in May 1967. His detailed notes of train consists and time-keeping of arrivals and departures are presented here. May 11, 1967 IC #21, Green Diamond, Springfield, Ill.-St. LouisIC 4023 E8AIC 4109 E9B CofG 812 […]
Today you can ride across the United States aboard long-distance Amtrak trains such as the Lake Shore Limited, Silver Star, California Zephyr, or Texas Eagle. The dining cars serve tasty, regional cuisine and the double-deck Sightseer Lounge cars offer a superb platform for viewing America. However, 30 years ago passenger trains in the United States […]
Merger? What merger? Two tariffs equal one trip By J. David Ingles As railroad mergers were sweeping the land through the 1960’s, passenger services of individual carriers were on a one-way trip to oblivion, culminating in Amtrak’s formation in 1971. For most roads, this couldn’t happen soon enough, and this attitude, couple with the regulatory […]
As an Episcopal priest serving in Iowa in the 1960’s, I was lucky to have Gordon V. Smith as my bishop. Bishop Smith was always eager to do whatever he could to make life easier and happier for us clergy who were in his jurisdiction. He was fascinated with my interest in railroads, and was […]
For many years, the Lehigh Valley maintained some offices in downtown Philadelphia, even though this was an off-line point. In the mid-1940’s, the Valley relocated the offices to its building just west of the Bethlehem (Pa.) Union Station. The LV cushioned the hardship of the move by having a special chartered train run each working […]
