The American Car & Foundry-built Missouri Pacific lounge diner on the South Texas Eagle offered a quality of food and expanse of lounge that airlines of the day couldn’t match. American Car & Foundry photo […]
Passenger amenities
Train Topic: Fallen Flags
Nickel-plated freight
Westbound Nickel Plate Road train NC-3 rolls through the east side of Cleveland, Ohio, in June 1959. The railroad, formally known as the New York, Chicago & St. Louis, dieselized its freight operations with road-switchers. As evidence, a mix of six Alco and EMD locomotives led by Alco RS11 No. 568 and EMD GP9 No. […]
Lackawanna style
A Fairbanks-Morse H24-66 Train Master diesel locomotive shows off the colors of owner Delaware, Lackawanna & Western at Hoboken, N.J., in 1956. The railroad had 12 such locomotives, Nos. 850-861, built in two batches in 1953 and 1956. They would become Erie Lackawanna Nos. 1850–1861 after the 1960 merger with the Erie Railroad. Bob Krone […]
Grand Crossing
This 1902 northward view of Chicago’s Grand Crossing makes it obvious how this busy South Side rail intersection got its name. Six tracks of Illinois Central (two suburban, two passenger, two freight) cross the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago (Pennsylvania Railroad) and Lake Shore and Michigan Southern (New York Central). Illinois Central photo […]
Western Maryland locomotive to be refurbished, receive new protective structure
HAGERSTOWN, Md. — The last surviving conventional Western Maryland Railway steam locomotive, Class K2 Pacific No. 202, will be repositioned in Hagerstown City Park, receive a new protective structure, and be refurbished, the Hagerstown Herald-Mail reports. Hagerstown has hired Frederick, Md., firm Proffitt & Associates Architects to oversee the project. Senior Project Architect Kevin Kneer […]
Diesel conquest
A matched A-B-B-A set of FT diesels leads a Santa Fe train upgrade at Tehachapi, Calif., in the late 1940s. The FT, introduced in 1939, proved that diesel-electric locomotives could perform well in heavy-haul mainline freight service, leading the way for the dieselization of American railroads. Linn Westcott photo […]
Cab-forward conundrum
A 4200-series 4-8-8-2 cab-forward steam locomotive is cut in behind a 4-8-4 to double-head Southern Pacific’s Overland Limited upgrade out of Colfax, Calif., in April 1950. The cab-forwards were a special design unique to the Southern Pacific to spare head end crews from the accumulation of exhaust in the railroad’s lengthy and frequent tunnels and snowsheds. That […]
California State Railroad Museum to restore ‘Death Valley Scotty’ locomotive to operating condition
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The California State Railroad Museum and its support group, the California State Railroad Museum Foundation, have launched an effort to restore Santa Fe steam locomotive No. 1010, a 2-6-2 built by Baldwin in 1901, for use on the museum’s Sacramento Southern excursion railroad. The project — the largest steam restoration project undertaken […]
611 at speed
Only seven years old, but already facing an uncertain future, Norfolk & Western J Class 4-8-4 No. 611 sprints at better than a mile-a-minute pace across the summit at Blue Ridge, Va. Behind the now-famous locomotive are 15 cars on train No. 46, the eastbound Tennessean, bound for Lynchburg, Va. The top of the skyline […]
Ultimate dual-service engine: New York Central 4-8-2 Mohawks
The New York Central 4-8-2 Mohawks were the ultimate dual-service steam locomotives. For some railroads in the steam era, it wasn’t enough to have success with a single example of a standard wheel arrangement. Instead, new competitive challenges and evolving technology often caused railroads to rethink a given locomotive class and turn it almost entirely […]
New York City High Line railroad history
The New York City High Line a sight to behold on Manhattan’s West Side. It was born of a vast improvement program in the 1930s, which took West Side freight trains off city streets. The trains were then powered by electric traction north of 30th Street and behind diesel power south of 30th Street. […]
NYC Pacific with the Sycamore
Former Pittsburgh & Lake Erie class K-5a Pacific 4920 is just out of the station at Lafayette, Ind., and onto the Wabash River bridge with the westbound Sycamore in 1950. Robert Aldag Jr. photo […]
