A westbound BNSF freight train rounds the Tehachapi Loop in Southern California. Howard Ande The product of the Sept. 22, 1995 merger of the parent companies of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway and the Burlington Northern Railroad, BNSF is one of the west’s two giant railroad systems. Its 32,000-mile network (24,000 owned route […]
In his article “Nine Decades in the Service of Steam” in the Summer 2004 issue of Classic Trains magazine, James A. Brown looks at the final, glorious years of Stratford Big Shop, Canadian National’s last steam-locomotive overhaul facility. Below is a PDF that includes the layout of the Canadian National Stratford Shop. Please note that […]
Norfolk & Western Y6-Class 2-8-8-2 No. 2136 thunders east near Delbarton, W.Va., with a coal train on March 25, 1959. Bruce R. Meyer Bruce Meyer has been on a search for steam since he started taking railroad photographs in the early 1950s. Meyer made a dramatic record of steam’s final years in the Midwest and […]
On a cold night in Sherbrooke, Que., in February 1957, the engineer of Canadian National 4-6-2 No. 5293 admires his steed. Jim Shaughnessy photo; TRAINS collection. By day and by night, in color and black-and-white, and on railroads big and small, Jim Shaughnessy has produced a vivid record of the railroad and its environment. Though […]
LOCOMOTIVES COSTING $1,000 or more seem to capture all the attention today, so we went down to our local hobby shop to find some locomotives that didn’t have “Rockefeller” as a last name. We found three moderately priced diesels that model three notable periods of U.S. railroad history and reflect three periods of O gauge […]
THE LATEST SWITCHER to be added to the MTH Premier line lineup is the Alco S-2, which was ubiquitous on American railroads and industrial operations 20 to 60 years ago. More than 1,400 of the 1,000-horsepower locomotives were built for U.S. railroads between 1940 and 1950. According to one diesel preservation website, there are at […]
Model Power’s N scale 4-4-0 steam locomotive A nicely proportioned N scale model of a 4-4-0 American type has been released by Model Power. Small steam engines are few and far between in N, and Model Power has high hopes for this one – the American is available in 16 road names plus a painted […]
Athearn Genesis HO scale F unit diesel Sound and a dual-mode DCC (Digital Command Control) decoders are the latest additions to Athearn’s models of Electro-Motive Division F units. When this new electronics package is combined with the smooth-running Genesis mechanism, you get a locomotive that’ll pull a prototype-size train and sound like a hard-working EMD […]
Branchline Pullman Standard HO sleeper passenger car Now you can equip your HO limiteds with heavyweight Pullman sleeping cars that are as accurate and well-detailed as the best imported brass models. Branchline Trains has introduced finely molded plastic kits for cars that were the mainstays of long-distance travel. The kits have many parts and take […]
Atlas HO H-24-66 Train Master This Train Master heavy-duty diesel locomotive is the first Atlas HO scale model to include a sound system, which adds even more realism to the smooth-running mechanism and superb detail we’ve come to expect from Atlas. These models include railroad-specific details and come ready-to-run in DC and DCC (Digital Command […]
Model Power N scale USRA 4-6-2 light Pacific steam locomotive Model Power has released a United States Railroad Administration (USRA) 4-6-2 light Pacific passenger steam locomotive. The N scale, ready-to-run engine includes a die-cast metal boiler and frame and features some nice additional factory-applied metal and plastic detail parts. According to Linn Westcott’s Model Railroader […]
Kato N scale Budd Rail Diesel Cars (RDCs) After admiring the crisp detail on Kato’s new N scale Rail Diesel Cars (RDCs), my next immediate thought was, “So where in heck’s the motor?” That’s because I could look right through the side windows of these well-engineered, DCC-ready models. Taking a design cue from the prototype, […]
