In 1942, for a boy seeking brand-new road power, old Reading Camelback 0-6-0 1323 was nothing special—but would that we could ride her today! George Gillespie Younger readers must wonder why we old-timers gloat over some picture taken during our youth. It’s the sentimental attachment and memories of a wonderful period, of course. My father […]
On a hot afternoon in August 1960, the year before the author began his Erie employment there, five Alco cab units thundered past SN Tower with a 99 freight. J. David Ingles In 1961 my dream came true. For the past six months or so I had been hanging out at various towers on the […]
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From 1943 to 1989, Kalmbach Publishing Co. — whose family of magazines includes Model Railroader (launched 1934), Trains (1940), and Classic Trains (2000) — occupied this building at 1027 N. 7th Street in Milwaukee. The number “1027” has significance for generations of KPC customers. Classic Trains collection […]
Bruceton was a busy junction in west Tennessee on the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway. One engineer who worked out of there was known for his pompous, stuffed-shirt manner and lordly bearing which often grated upon others. Drawing a hotshot run out of Bruceton, this engineer put his 2-8-2 to serious work and was […]
Way back in 1940, I took a fling at railroading. After ditching art school, I went to work for the Alton Railroad at its roundhouse at Glenn Yard in southwest Chicago. My job was mechanic’s helper. One of my duties was to tighten the bolts on locomotive cylinder heads. I attacked the task with vim […]
Depot and diesel wear different heralds, but nothing is out of the ordinary as a Chicago Great Western freight ambles past the Rock Island station in Waterloo, Iowa, in June 1961. Richard J. Anderson A family visit took me to Waterloo, Iowa, on a June day in 1961, but it was good ol’ railfan instinct […]
The Santa Fe established a major shop complex at Albuquerque to maintain and repair steam locomotives. At their peak in 1940, the shops were one of the city’s largest employers, with 1787 workers. The shops declined as the Santa Fe dieselized, and, as the road’s last steam backshop, perfromed their final locomotive work in March […]
Illinois Central wasn’t the first railroad in Chicago, but it was one of 10 Class 1’s headquartered there and became arguably the most visible, thanks to its lakefront location. Its Romanesque Revival-style Central Station, built on fill in Lake Michigan for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, served IC plus New York Central’s Michigan Central and […]
To handle maintenance and repairs on its substantial hopper-car fleet, coal-hauler Chesapeake & Ohio in 1930 built this systemwide freight-car shop at Raceland, Ky., at the west end of its massive Russell Yard, a facility built to classify coal cars moving west to Cincinnati and Chicago, as well as north to Lake Erie docks for […]
The Norfolk & Western Railway transported much of the coal mined in southwestern Virginia and West Virginia. Many loads went north to Lake Erie, others to “tidewater” at N&W’s big terminal in Norfolk, Va., opened in 1885. Here it was loaded in vessels for shipment to ports up the East Coast or for overseas export. […]
SP’s Los Angeles General Shops UCLA Dept. of Geography, Air Photo Archives Southern Pacific facilities dominate three views of Los Angeles. Much in this 1934 scene is gone, or greatly changed. SP’s Los Angeles General Shops, the most complete railroad maintenance facility the city has ever seen, was replaced by an intermodal yard in the […]
