The EMC TA diesel locomotive was an early passenger diesel and a Rock Island oddity. If it looks and sounds like an early EMC E-series streamlined diesel passenger locomotive, there is a good chance it is. But don’t bet the family farm. The locomotive in question is the EMC TA diesel, a […]
Chicago & North Western passenger trains: All through December 2023, Classic Trains editors are celebrating the history and heritage of the C&NW. Please enjoy this photo gallery of Chicago & North Western passenger trains, originally published online in May 2015. […]
In a view from one of the California Zephyr’s five regularly assigned dome cars, another dome curves through the Rocky Mountains during the streamliner’s trip over the Denver & Rio Grande Western. Gordon Odegard photo […]
Western Maryland 2-10-0 1109 rounds famous Helmstetter’s Curve west of Cumberland, Md., with a westbound freight in May 1952. Unseen, two more Decapods at mid-train and a fourth on the rear help lift the train upgrade. Ed Theisinger photo […]
Atlantic Coast Line 2-8-2 7230 and 4-8-2 7372 team up on a northbound freight near Vienna, Va., in 1947. Both engines formerly worked for the Atlanta, Birmingham & Coast, which ACL acquired in 1945. David W. Salter photo […]
New York Central 4505, a rare Fairbanks-Morse CPA-24-5, leads a train toward Chicago at Otis, Ind., in April 1954. A Studebaker, built in nearby South Bend, is beside the depot. Eugene Van Dusen photo […]
In an early 20th century photo, a Camelback locomotive, probably a 2-8-0, crosses the Erie Railroad’s Starrucca Viaduct with a westbound freight. Completed in 1848 at Lanesboro, Pa., on the Erie’s main line west to Binghamton, N.Y., the 1,200-foot stone structure is still carrying trains in 2017. Erie photo […]
For years the Chicago & North Western operated Chicago’s most extensive commuter service. Its three routes were designated West, North, and Northwest. Those names also serve well to group C&NW’s lines west, northwest, and north from Chicago. West, North, and Northwest The railroad capital of the U.S., Chicago, saw its first locomotive in […]
Into the 1960s, Chicago & North Western passenger trains blanketed the Upper Midwest, especially in Wisconsin — a popular vacationland until the jet airliner beckoned travelers instead to the likes of Southern California, Miami, and Las Vegas. In the late 1950s, new C&NW management saw the writing on the walls of the railroad’s majestic […]
An artist’s rendering depicts the interior of the dining car on the Milwaukee Road’s 1947 Olympian Hiawatha. Classic Trains coll. […]
I don’t keep bucket lists, but one thing I’d been hoping to visit one day was the famed Oyster Bar, the historic restaurant that’s been operating in the catacombs of New York City’s Grand Central Terminal nearly continuously for 110 years. I finally got my chance a couple of weeks ago during a short research […]
Bessemer & Lake Erie locomotive 403, one of 82 six-motor, 1,500 h.p. DRS-6-6-15 road-switchers built by Baldwin between 1948 and 1950, idles in 1970. Eric Hirsimaki photo […]
