History According to Hediger: The DT&I Delta Turn

Yellow diesel locomotive facing camera

Having trouble viewing this video?   Please visit our Video FAQ page Part of Jim’s career included a stint in real railroading, which provided him opportunities to get some great photos and stories. In this episode of History According to Hediger video, Jim rides along on the DT&I’s Delta Turn. Related Topics: railfan […]

Read More…

History According to Hediger: The Hiawatha Tour

Model steam locomotives

Having trouble viewing this video?   Please visit our Video FAQ page History According to Hediger is a video series of remaniscence of the good old days of Model Railroader magazine. Senior editor Jim Hediger tells the story of the Hiawatha good will tour, marking Model Railroader’s 50th anniversary. […]

Read More…

History According to Hediger: Editors’ Cars

Model boxcars

Having trouble viewing this video?   Please visit our Video FAQ page In this video epsiode of History According to Hediger, Jim shows a few of the custom O scale freight cars featuring MR staff layouts. The cars were made for display at events in the 1970s. Related Topics: o scale […]

Read More…

A new way to unload sand

This story was related to me by those personally involved in a new but somewhat less-than-satisfactory method of unloading sand. The time was in the middle of the Great Depression. The locale was the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the “U.P.” The two unloaders were the sons of a local Methodist preacher, long in spirit and […]

Read More…

A South Bend tradition

SSL100

Two of the South Shore Line’s air-conditioned M.U. cars stand at the road’s downtown South Bend, Ind., depot on La Salle Street in 1967. H. G. Goerke; J. David Ingles coll. It was about 14 years before this evocative photo was snapped by my late train-chasing buddy Hank Goerke that I first stepped off a […]

Read More…

Inside State Line Tower

20130219

An operator pulls the armstrong levers to align a route at busy State Line Tower, near Hammond, Ind., on the Chicago & Western Indiana. As the track diagram shows, several railroads operated through the 200-plus lever plant. Wallace W. Abbey photo […]

Read More…

Steam in the atomic age

CV461

CV M-5-a 461, the same class of 2-8-0 entrusted with atomic loads, nears Amherst, Mass., with a Palmer-Brattleboro local in 1950. Robert P. Brittin, Douglas J. Brittin coll. As a child in the mid-1950s, I was privileged to witness several “secret” military moves on the Central Vermont Railway. Given the high state of security surrounding […]

Read More…

SP logging train

20130129

A Southern Pacific 2-8-0 pulls a log train on the Cloudcroft branch near Alamogordo, N.Mex. This view is from 1946, three years before the line was abandoned. Henry Garcia photo […]

Read More…

Santa Fe’s Fast Mail and Chief

20130128

An A-B-B set of F7’s leads the Santa Fe’s Fast Mail Express toward Los Angeles at West Victorville, Calif., in 1950. The train’s 14-car consist is heavy with baggage, express, and mail storage cars, but it also includes a Railway Post Office car. A baggage-coach combine brought up the rear as a rider car for […]

Read More…

1975-1982: Seven more years of change in Philadelphia

Amtrak

South of 30th Street Station in September 1980, an Amtrak E60 accelerates a train toward Washington while, in the background, SEPTA Silverliner IV’s head out on a commuter run to either Media/Elwyn or Wilmington. Robert S. McGonigal Bob Trennert, in his article “A West Coast Railfan in Philadelphia, 1967–1974” in the Spring 2013 issue of […]

Read More…