Fallen flag

  It’s a cool, fall afternoon in Wixom, Mich., where the Michigan Air-Line Railway has completed its interchange with CSX and is retreating to its base in Walled Lake on Nov. 20, 2011. Six months after this photo was taken, these former Grand Trunk Western tracks were ripped up for a bike trail. Photo by […]

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Matched set

  Eastbound Providence & Worcester train FPCH with B39-8 No. 3909, B30-7A No. 3007, and B39-8 No. 3908 prepares to depart the New York & Atlantic Railway’s Fresh Pond Yard in Queens, N.Y., on Aug. 15, 2009. Photo by Thomas Mik     […]

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West Coast passenger trains

Screen Shot 20140213 at 95216 AM

What you’re seeing here is a transformation that’s nothing short of remarkable. Twenty years ago, a map of West Coast short-haul passenger trains would’ve been little more than a blank page. Back then, Amtrak provided minimal service between Oakland and Bakersfield, Calif., and between Portland and Seattle, though it did field 14 San Diegans a […]

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Chasing 4014: Part III

This video segment covers the time from when Union Pacific’s Big Boy No. 4014 first reached Covina, Calif., in the early morning hours of Jan. 26 to mid-morning in Bassett, Calif. Follow along as Steve Sweeney, Howard Bunte, and Brent Lane chase the 4-8-8-4 locomotive switch from the Metrolink main line to Union Pacific tracks. […]

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Chasing 4014 Part II

This second installment of videos from Trains’ zany chase of Union Pacific’s Big Boy No. 4014 from Pomona to West Colton, Calif., takes off minutes from where Part I ended: with the Big Boy on the Metrolink main line at 2:30 a.m., and Steve Sweeney, Howard Bunte, and Brent Lane in hot pursuit. Enjoy! […]

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Serving the president of the Katy

TexasSpl2000

The Katy-Frisco Texas Special, a favorite conveyance for the Katy president’s business car, arrives in St. Louis in 1956. Fred Scott My railroad-related career started in 1941, when I was hired as a stenographer by the South-Western Freight Bureau in St. Louis. It was readily accepted for a young man who had studied shorthand and […]

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Trip on the GM&O in May 1951 Trains

Read the article, “Travel . . . Family Style,” from the May 1951 issue of Trains magazine, in which Bill Akin and his wife and daughter, identified as the “Andrews” family, ride the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio between Chicago and St. Louis. Download the story by clicking here. […]

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