Cousins

Two Alco switchers, one active and one derelict, call the National Railroad Museum in Green Bay, Wis., home. Here, on May 31, 2014, one pulls an excursion train around the railroad’s loop track. Both are painted for the Green Bay & Western. Photo by Brian Schmidt […]

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Kindnesses on the Omaha Road

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Omaha Road 4-6-2 No. 500 departs Minneapolis with a train for Superior, Wis., in August 1950. Bob Borcherding At nearly 70 years of age, I am still enthralled at the passage of trains. Today’s trains—often featuring high-horsepower diesel locomotives, radio-controlled helpers, rotary-dump coal cars by the unit-trainload, and containers carrying products from halfway around the […]

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Whizzer

The Wisconsin & Southern, affectionately known as the “Whizzer” to local railfans, whizzes through Waukesha, Wis., on June 2, 2014. Photo by Brian Schmidt […]

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Book Review: Rock Island Requiem: The Collapse of a Mighty Fine Line

Rock Island Requiem

Rock Island Requiem: The Collapse of a Mighty Fine Line By Gregory L. Schneider University Press of Kansas, 2502 Westbrooke Cir., Lawrence, KS 66045; 392 pages, 26 photos; hardcover, 6.125 x 9.25 in.; $37.50 This impressive volume chronicles the long, sad decline of the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad, and illustrates how federal regulation […]

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Twin Cities’ passenger trains through the years

FULL SCREEN St. Paul Dispatch-Pioneer Press, Minnesota Historical Society Collection Burlington’s Zephyr‘s gather at St. Paul Union Depot on Sept. 29, 1948. FULL SCREEN Ronald Lundstrom Freshly painted SD45s Nos. 407 and 412 power a Great Northern director’s special at St. Paul Union Depot in the mid 1960s. FULL SCREEN Byron D. Olsen The Milwaukee […]

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Right-of-way

  Looking out of place, two CSX GEs take Canadian Pacific train No. 470 down North Second Street in Bellevue, Iowa, on Jan. 19, 2014. Photo by Matt Krause   […]

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Local hero

With a short five-car train, Canadian National’s local out of Dubuque, Iowa, has just crossed the Mississippi River and pops out of the short tunnel in East Dubuque, IL. The train will travel down the BNSF Railway using trackage to an industry that CN switches before calling it a day and returning home after dark. Photo […]

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C&EI’s Meadowlark

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E7 diesel 1101 leads Chicago & Eastern Illinois’ southbound Meadowlark at 63rd Street station (“Little Englewood”), Chicago, in the late 1940s. The obscure orange-and-blue streamliner terminated at the unlikely location of Cyprus, Ill. (population 300). William N. Clark photo […]

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Milwaukee racer

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It’s been said that Milwaukee Road’s class F6 4-6-4s, built 1930–31, looked like they were going fast even when standing still. There does seem to be a rakish “leaning-forward” quality to this photo of nearly new No. 6402. MILW […]

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