What kind of day did you have?

20140604TWIW

Bystanders inspect a sedan deluged with coke during a derailment of an L&N train in Chattanooga. C. K. Marsh Jr. One day in 1965, a friend and I were searching for the obscure terminal of the Tennessee, Alabama & Georgia Railroad in the Alton Park section of Chattanooga. Coming up on a railroad crossing, we […]

Read More…

C&EI’s Meadowlark

20150424

E7 diesel 1101 leads Chicago & Eastern Illinois’ southbound Meadowlark at 63rd Street station (“Little Englewood”), Chicago, in the late 1940s. The obscure orange-and-blue streamliner terminated at the unlikely location of Cyprus, Ill. (population 300). William N. Clark photo […]

Read More…

The Erie’s Otisville tunnel

20140519

The concrete west portal of Erie’s Otisville (N.Y.) tunnel — from which a Berkshire-powered freight emerges — is fairly simple, but with pilasters and the inscription “19–OTISVILLE–08” in embossed lettering overhead. Note the early installation of welded rail on the eastward track. Wayne Brumbaugh photo […]

Read More…

Pennsy T1 on the Broadway

20140514

PRR T1 4-4-4-4 No. 5507 clatters through 21st Street interlocking in Chicago with the Broadway Limited for New York. A T1 on the Broadway is relatively rare, as dieselization of PRR’s top trains came soon after the giant duplexes arrived. Wallace W. Abbey photo […]

Read More…

Chessie System freight at Keystone Viaduct

20140520

An SD40 and GP9 hold back a westbound freight as they descend Sand Patch Grade a couple of miles west of Sand Patch, Pa., on the former Baltimore & Ohio. The bridge overhead carried the Western Maryland main line, which was rendered redundant when B&O and WM came under common Chessie System control. David Dudjak […]

Read More…

CN 2-8-0 at Chipman, N.B.

20140508

Canadian National 2-8-0 No. 2444, assigned as the switcher in Chipman, N.B., negotiates the steep grade and tight curves at the town’s brickyard on a gray day in November 1953. Philip R. Hastings photo […]

Read More…

End of the Lima line

20140521

Nickel Plate 779 was not only the final member of that road’s notable family of Berkshires, it was also the last steam locomotive built by the Lima Locomotive Works. This fact was not known until some time after its May 13, 1949, completion, and Lima did not make an official photo of her. Instead, the […]

Read More…

Milwaukee racer

20140528

It’s been said that Milwaukee Road’s class F6 4-6-4s, built 1930–31, looked like they were going fast even when standing still. There does seem to be a rakish “leaning-forward” quality to this photo of nearly new No. 6402. MILW […]

Read More…

C&O E8’s on “the George”

20140515

Two brand-new E8’s are in charge of the westbound George Washington at Hampton, Va., on Sept. 12, 1951. C&O bought 31 E8’s from EMD between 1951 and ’53, the first 10 of which wore the blue-and-yellow “freight” livery seen here. Bill Taub photo […]

Read More…

Fastest hogger on the slim-gauge

DRGW485engr

A predecessor of this Rio Grande engineer made a daring Chama–Durango run in 1923. A. C. Kalmbach My grandfather, Marvin Rhodes, lived for almost a century, and he spent more than half of his long life working out of Durango, Colo., on the narrow-gauge lines of the Denver & Rio Grande Western. He hired out […]

Read More…

Santa Fe RDC on the Reading

20140505

En route from Philadelphia’s Budd Co. to its owner, Santa Fe Railway Rail Diesel Car DC-192 is added to the rear of the Reading’s Harrisburg Special at RDG’s Outer Station in Reading, Pa., in May 1952. At right, a Reading G-3 Pacific stands with another passenger train. George W. Gerhart photo […]

Read More…