An accidental beginning

SP 4229

SP 4229, the cab-forward on which author Anderson was firing as the second engine of a doubleheader when lead engine 4208 threw a rod, hauls L.A.-bound freight 766 up Casamilia Hill on the Coast Line in 1947. Jim Morley As an 18-year-old kid going firing on Southern Pacific’s Coast Division in 1953, my life was […]

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Railroading in Maine at 40 below zero

BAR-W-Seboois

Five years after author Dow’s Bangor & Aroostook experience, in March 1955, a 103-car freight waits at snowy West Seboois, Maine, for a meet with the Aroostook Flyer. Allen A. Sharp The temperature on that February 1950 morning at Oakfield, Maine, was a savage 40 degrees below zero. The sky was clear, with little or […]

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Omaha Road local departing Minneapolis

20130628

Bound for Ashland, Wis., on Lake Superior, the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha’s local train No. 508 departs Minneapolis on August 4, 1950. Drawn by 4-6-2 No. 500, the train’s consist suggests that its mission involved considerably more express and mail than passenger traffic. The “Omaha Road” was a Chicago & North Western subsidiary. […]

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Roller-bearing stunt on the Western Maryland

20130613

In a stunt meant to demonstrate the free-rolling characteristics of freight cars equipped with Timken roller bearings, three women — Jackie White, Jean Crow, and Chris Roberts — heave on a new 55-ton hopper car at Western Maryland’s Port Covington yard in Baltimore in the 1950s. Classic Trains coll. […]

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GG1 helping a Metroliner

20130605

Amtrak GG1 No. 912 dashes through the snow at Bowie, Md., with a four-car Metroliner train in February 1978. The high-speed M.U.’s did not do well in snow, and were often towed by GG1’s when the flakes began to fly. Walter Feibelman photo […]

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Night ride to Valparaiso

PRR-Detroit-Arrow-obs

As on the train artist buddies Gil Reid and Howard Fogg rode, an open-platform observation car brings up the rear of PRR’s Detroit Arrow at Englewood on the South Side of Chicago. R. S. Stemier One day in 1940 or ’41, I was in my Chicago apartment trying to make up my mind about whether […]

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Policing the Olympian Hi

MILW Skytop

Models posed in the lounge of a Milwaukee Road Skytop sleeper-observation car appear to be better behaved than some of the soldiers who rode the Olympian Hiawatha after the Korean War. Milwaukee Road When the Korean conflict was halted by a truce in 1953, there was a rush to get most of our troops home. […]

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Humping at North Platte

20180524

Union Pacific NW2 No. 1091, with extra ballast and low-speed gearing, shoves the last cars of a freight train up the hump. Behind the diesel is the new yard’s car-inspection station. Wallace W. Abbey photo […]

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