FULL SCREEN Trains Magazine Collection Skiers disembark Boston & Maine’s Snow Train at North Conway, N.H. FULL SCREEN Trains Magazine collection Passengers enjoy their ride aboard the Boston & Maine Snow Train. FULL SCREEN John Gruber collection The front cover of Boston & Maine’s 36-page booklet advertising its 1940 season. FULL SCREEN John Gruber collection […]
Magazine: Classic Trains
To Chicago with Dad
Grand Trunk Western 4-8-2 No. 6040 on the Maple Leaf stands beside Santa Fe E1 diesel No. 2 on the Kansas Cityan at Chicago’s Dearborn Station. Frank M. Rogers I think I was a railfan by the time I was 5 years old. My father had been a fireman on the Milwaukee Road since he […]
Southern 4501’s first excursion
FULL SCREEN John Gruber Graham Claytor Jr. (left) appears apprehensive as he talks with D. W. Brosnan and Walter Dove on the platform at Asheville, N.C. But the conversation was friendly and the 4501 soon was on its way. FULL SCREEN John Gruber Locomotive 4501 proudly poses at Terminal Station, about ready to leave on […]
Big Saturday night
Frisco 4501, one of the road’s three 4500-series 4-8-4s assigned to passenger service, rolls the Meteor into St. Louis. Ben F. Cutler About midnight on a Saturday in 1944 on the station platform in Neosho, Mo., are 500 guys with suntans, each carrying a one-day pass and probably a railway ticket tucked in his wallet. […]
Calculated drawbar horsepower curves for 4-8-4s
This graph shows the calculated drawbar horsepower curves for five classes in the first wave of 4-8-4s: Lackawanna Q-1, Canadian National U-2-a, Northern Pacific A, Santa Fe 3751, and Canadian Pacific K-1. Neil Carlson In the days of steam it was a normal practice to estimate the horsepower potential of a locomotive. Baldwin Locomotive Works […]
Glossary of steam locomotive terms
Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac 4-8-4 No. 602, named Governor Thomas Jefferson, rushes an 18-car passenger train toward Washington, D.C., near Four Mile Run, Va., in June 1940. C. W. Whitbeck Back pressure Back pressure is caused by the resistance of the exhaust steam exiting the cylinders. Overcoming this resistance represents negative work done by the […]
Streetcar Sundays
Philadelphia Transportation Co. PCC car 2115 cruises east on a Route 56 run along Erie Avenue in 1955. Mert Leet My dad worked as a trolley operator for the Philadelphia Transportation Company. Stationed at the 10th and Luzerne carbarn, he was one of a legion of veterans who found work on the PTC after World […]
Rock Island Diesel Menagerie
Read more about the Rock Island’s 1960s diesel menagerie in a PDF of the article “Christine and the Mongeese” by J. David Ingles, published in the December 1965 issue of TRAINS magazine. Rock Island Diesel Menagerie DOWNLOAD […]
Classic Trains, Fall 2011
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Postwar commuter surprises
“Deluxe” cars like these on New Haven train 365 at Darien, Conn., in July 1947 were not what author Paradis experienced on his commuter-train rides. NH The distant rumble warned that the mighty New York Central steam locomotive with its 12 steel coaches would soon round the curve on the Harlem Division and bear down […]
A unique threesome
Amtrak GG1 meets an E60 in 1980, two years after the author’s ride behind one of each, plus a Conrail E44. Robert S. McGonigal As the murky fall afternoon began to lengthen, the Silver Meteor I was riding across northern New Jersey began to slow down. Then just east of Rahway, nowhere near a scheduled […]
Rondout Memories
Seen from the North Shore Line bridge, a Milwaukee Road F7 4-6-4 rips through Rondout, Ill., with train 15, the Olympian, in March 1941. Frank Sellers At Christmastime 1940, when I was 15 years old, my widowed mother spent $4 of her hard-earned money to buy me a Kodak Brownie Special camera. I was thrilled. […]
