The American Car & Foundry-built Missouri Pacific lounge diner on the South Texas Eagle offered a quality of food and expanse of lounge that airlines of the day couldn’t match. American Car & Foundry photo […]
Passenger amenities
Section: Photos and Videos
Nickel-plated freight
Westbound Nickel Plate Road train NC-3 rolls through the east side of Cleveland, Ohio, in June 1959. The railroad, formally known as the New York, Chicago & St. Louis, dieselized its freight operations with road-switchers. As evidence, a mix of six Alco and EMD locomotives led by Alco RS11 No. 568 and EMD GP9 No. […]
Lackawanna style
A Fairbanks-Morse H24-66 Train Master diesel locomotive shows off the colors of owner Delaware, Lackawanna & Western at Hoboken, N.J., in 1956. The railroad had 12 such locomotives, Nos. 850-861, built in two batches in 1953 and 1956. They would become Erie Lackawanna Nos. 1850–1861 after the 1960 merger with the Erie Railroad. Bob Krone […]
Grand Crossing
This 1902 northward view of Chicago’s Grand Crossing makes it obvious how this busy South Side rail intersection got its name. Six tracks of Illinois Central (two suburban, two passenger, two freight) cross the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago (Pennsylvania Railroad) and Lake Shore and Michigan Southern (New York Central). Illinois Central photo […]
Flexi-Van
New York Central’s Flexi-Van concept went through multiple versions in its lifespan. This Mark III edition required the tractor to support the container while it was pivoted into place on the car due to the car’s end-turntable configuration. New York Central photo […]
First of its kind
Twenty miles out of Kansas City on its 187-mile trek to Salina, Kans., on the old Kansas Pacific route, Union Pacific No. 800, a 1937 Alco and first of its 45 4-8-4s, has a roll on train 39, the Kansan, west of Bonner Springs on August 8, 1955. Frank and Todd Novak collection […]
F3s down south
Southern Railway F3 No. 4144 leads an A-B-B-A set of diesel locomotives on a long freight at an unidentified location. The railroad had 178 F3A units and 76 F3Bs, built between 1946 and ’49. E.P. Dandridge Jr. photo […]
Diesel conquest
A matched A-B-B-A set of FT diesels leads a Santa Fe train upgrade at Tehachapi, Calif., in the late 1940s. The FT, introduced in 1939, proved that diesel-electric locomotives could perform well in heavy-haul mainline freight service, leading the way for the dieselization of American railroads. Linn Westcott photo […]
Chryslers for Gotham
The New York Central had several auto-carrier Flexi-Vans in the early 1960s. This is a publicity shot of carriers with new Chryslers on their way to New York City in 1960. New York Central photo […]
Cab-forward conundrum
A 4200-series 4-8-8-2 cab-forward steam locomotive is cut in behind a 4-8-4 to double-head Southern Pacific’s Overland Limited upgrade out of Colfax, Calif., in April 1950. The cab-forwards were a special design unique to the Southern Pacific to spare head end crews from the accumulation of exhaust in the railroad’s lengthy and frequent tunnels and snowsheds. That […]
Branchline accommodation
Gas-electric motorcars were the first successful application of internal combustion on railroads. Chicago, Burlington & Quincy No. 9838 was an Electro-Motive product built by St. Louis Car Co. in 1927. It was powered by a 275-hp gasoline engine. The car pauses at Virden, Ill., south of Springfield, to load goods and passengers on this day. […]
611 at speed
Only seven years old, but already facing an uncertain future, Norfolk & Western J Class 4-8-4 No. 611 sprints at better than a mile-a-minute pace across the summit at Blue Ridge, Va. Behind the now-famous locomotive are 15 cars on train No. 46, the eastbound Tennessean, bound for Lynchburg, Va. The top of the skyline […]
