In the late 1960s and in to the ’70s, I had numerous rides on Toledo, Peoria & Western freight trains in both directions out of Peoria, Ill., where I grew up. The TP&W interchanged with the Pennsylvania Railroad and its successors 108 miles east at Effner, Ind., and with the Santa Fe 114 miles west […]
On August 4, 1957, the Pennsylvania Railroad dispatched an eight-car train of MP54 multiple-unit cars from Penn Station, New York. Aboard the excursion were hundreds of railfans anticipating a day of riding mostly freight-only trackage to the western extremity of PRR catenary at Enola Yard across the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg, Pa. The exotic routing […]
SEPTEMBER 24, 1961 with response by Morgan OCTOBER 4, 1961 This exchange includes a letter from noted author, railfan, and bon vivant Lucius Beebe and a response from then-Trains Editor David P. Morgan about the book project, “When Beauty Rode the Rail”, published by Doubleday in 1962. Beebe notes that Morgan helped him with the title […]
By the mid-1960s, the appearance of F units on freights along Union Pacific’s main line through southern Wyoming was rare to nonexistent at best. All of the road’s F3s and F7s had been traded to EMD by the end of 1964 for replacement units in the form of GP30s, GP35s, and DD35s. However, there […]
Lucius Beebe-David Morgan correspondence project Between 1961 and 1966, prolific railroad book author Lucius Beebe and Trains editor David P. Morgan exchanged a flurry of letters, telegrams, and postcards, up to the week before Beebe’s death on February 4, 1966. The contents of this volume of correspondence regarded many things, including the art of book […]
Throughout the 1960s, my grandfather owned a filling station in the tiny town of Lanagan, south of Joplin in the southwestern corner of Missouri on the Kansas City Southern main line. Every weekend I would be at the station, and once my chores were done, I was free to wander about the area. The KCS […]
Santa Fe No. M-190 was possibly the most unusual gas-electric car ever manufactured. Measuring 90 feet long, it consisted of two articulated sections riding on three trucks. An Electro-Motive power plant and the operating cab were in the front section, and the rear portion was for baggage. When delivered in June 1932, M-190 had a […]
Sixty-odd years ago, I was a youth living in Palmyra, Wis., where my father, Ben Eller Sr., was the station agent for the Milwaukee Road. Palmyra, 42 miles west of Milwaukee, was on the Madison Division, the original line to the state capital via Milton and Janesville. When I was 12, I got braces on […]
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In August 1968, two years before author Dierks’ ride and when the Boise City mixed carried a combine instead of just a caboose, Santa Fe train 174 is at Elkhart, Kans. Joe McMillan This wasn’t my first rodeo, so to speak. I had ridden mixed trains in Utah and Idaho, and, just four days ago, one in Kansas. […]
The Milwaukee Road was one of the big players in Sioux Falls. One of its hottest trains in the late 1940s was the daily-except-Sunday meat train to Chicago, seen passing a diesel switcher as it departs Sioux Falls. Mikado 508 carries an extra tender to reduce water stops. Henry J. McCord Growing up in an […]
Not a Berkshire, but not bad: New York Central PA diesel No. 4208 and an unidentified PB hurry through Willoughby, Ohio, on Dec. 19, 1954. J. W. Swanberg I grew up in Connecticut, but my parents came from Minnesota, so all our relatives were there. Dad drove us to the Twin Cities at least once a […]
