The Columbus Junction canine caper

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On a hot summer night in the early 1960s, Rock Island E3 626 stands at Waterloo, Iowa, with train 190. Ahead 110 miles: Columbus Junction. J. David Ingles Sad to say, this story is true. Only the name of the guilty is omitted. Sad to say, I knew this man—and still do now. It happened […]

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A sandwich on the house

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To our family, the ultimate train was not the Broadway, the 20th Century, or the exalted Dominion that plied our home Canadian Pacific rails out of Toronto. For us, the train was CPR’s nameless workaday No. 25, leaving daily at 10:30 (reading as 9:30 in the days when timetables were printed in Standard Time regardless […]

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Nice to fire for, but a bit strange

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Southern Pacific 2-10-2 3757 rests at Sparks, Nev., in 1948. J. F. Larison I went firing on the Southern Pacific’s Coast Division in 1953. My engineer’s name was Lindsay, a hoghead in the regular San Francisco-Watsonville Junction (Calif.) chain gang. I fired for Lindsay several times and, although he never checked the water level by […]

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Diesels invade N&W’s Blue Ridge Grade

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Jim Shaughnessy Geeps at Boaz – 1 Framed by a waiting Y6 and the siding shanty, five N&W GP9’s pass the Blue Ridge Grade helper siding at Boaz, Va., with a westbound boxcar train in August 1958. Jim Shaughnessy Geeps at Boaz – 2 Another August 1958 photo finds three GP9’s bringing a merchandise train […]

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Not my favorite picture

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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 […]

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Spreading my wings from SN Junction

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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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Happy “Kalmbach Day”!

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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 […]

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Birth of an NC&StL nickname

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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 […]

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