Mammoth C&O Allegheny No. 1603 summons its 110,200 pounds of tractive force to haul a heavy coal train through West Virginia. Chesapeake & Ohio In 1940, the Chesapeake & Ohio needed new locomotives to meet a burgeoning demand for transportation. Its biggest engines were a fleet of single expansion 2-8-8-2s, purchased in the mid-1920s to […]
A scant three years after Alco introduced the Mallet to America (with the delivery of B&O’s sole 0-6-6-0 in 1904), the Erie took delivery of three camelback 0-8-8-0 Mallets – the first eight-coupled Mallets, also built by Alco – and put them to work as helpers on Gulf Summit in New York state. Southern Railway […]
In 1928, the Northern Pacific went shopping for a locomotive that could eliminate doubleheading on the eastern end of its Yellowstone Division between Mandan, N.Dak., and Glendive, Mont. NP’s line through the Badlands had a series of long grades in both directions that made helpers impracticable and had long been one of the railroad’s operational […]
Better than most railroads, perhaps, the Union Pacific understood fast freight service. With an expansive network of lines spread across the western states, the railroad had to maintain fast schedules in order to remain competitive. Mindful of this, UP purchased the first heavy fast freight locomotives: unique three-cylinder 4-12-2s, built by Alco from 1926 to […]
The proving ground for Union Pacific’s locomotives was a 75-mile portion of its busy main line between Ogden, Utah, and Evanston, Wyo. Eastward trains faced a climb through the Wasatch Mountains on grades of 1 percent or better. It was an expensive line to operate, particularly given UP’s practice of running big trains that typically […]
In his article “Nine Decades in the Service of Steam” in the Summer 2004 issue of Classic Trains magazine, James A. Brown looks at the final, glorious years of Stratford Big Shop, Canadian National’s last steam-locomotive overhaul facility. Below is a PDF that includes the layout of the Canadian National Stratford Shop. Please note that […]
Norfolk & Western Y6-Class 2-8-8-2 No. 2136 thunders east near Delbarton, W.Va., with a coal train on March 25, 1959. Bruce R. Meyer Bruce Meyer has been on a search for steam since he started taking railroad photographs in the early 1950s. Meyer made a dramatic record of steam’s final years in the Midwest and […]
Capturing the disappearing aspects of American life is photographer David Plowden’s stock in trade. He proudly relates that his first published photograph appeared in TRAINS magazine a year before he graduated from Yale with an economics degree. After photographing locomotives and other aspects of railroading in the early 1960s, he turned his camera to depots, […]
David W. Salter’s natural curiosity took him trackside throughout the South in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, photographing railroads in both color and black-and-white. Photography took a back seat when he was drafted into the Navy in 1950, and bounced to places as far-flung as Boston and Seattle, but Salter returned to his hobby after […]
Born and raised in Boise, Idaho, Henry Griffiths, Jr., produced an extensive, high-quality photographic record of railroading in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah. Griffiths began photographing in the 1930s. Among his successes was a 1952 photo essay commissioned by True magazine of Union Pacific’s operations west from Cheyenne, Wyo. After a career […]
It’s quiet at the depot in Raleigh, N.C., as a pair of FT diesels does some switching on an evening in October 1962. J. Parker Lamb Equally adept at both color and black-and-white, J. Parker Lamb has been taking photos since the fall of 1949 when he was in the eleventh grade. A native of […]
On a cold night in Sherbrooke, Que., in February 1957, the engineer of Canadian National 4-6-2 No. 5293 admires his steed. Jim Shaughnessy photo; TRAINS collection. By day and by night, in color and black-and-white, and on railroads big and small, Jim Shaughnessy has produced a vivid record of the railroad and its environment. Though […]
