In the “Fallen Flags Remembered” section of the Spring 2001 CLASSIC TRAINS magazine, author Mike Condren reminisces about the St. Louis-San Francisco. Here we present a selection of Frisco photos. Alex L. H. Darragh Seen from an eastbound train stopped in a siding, Mountain type 1505 and another engine doublehead a westbound passenger train at […]
JOHN W. BARRIGER III One of the most peripatetic chief executives in railroading-he led Monon, P&LE, Katy, and Boston & Maine-was also one of the most sagacious. “J.W.B.’s” vision of the Super Railroad was the template for every Class 1 of the 1990’s. RALPH BUDD Scholar as well as railroader, Budd ran Great Northern and […]
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At age 4, I looked forward to 2 p.m. That was the hour my grandfather would return to our house on Wicome Avenue in Newport News, Va., for his afternoon break, followed by our daily trip to trackside. Shortly after Granddaddy’s cup of coffee, we would drive in his white fin-tailed Cadillac over to the […]
Many of us didn’t want to believe that the steam era was drawing to a close — that diesels, those cousins of the automobile with their garish tin shrouds, were winning the battle over the noble iron horse — until a dreary Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1953. After that, we could no longer […]
I’m awakened by the sound of the phone ringing and his muffled voice saying, “It’s two-thirty. They probably want W-2 pushed east.” The old stairs squeak under his weight as he quickly descends them to answer the phone. “Hello?” “Yes, it is.” There is a long pause then he repeats bits of the message, “Ridgway, […]
In the small town of Goshen, Ind., where I grew up, one was always aware of the New York Central. Goshen was astride the New York-Chicago main line, so the railroad was not only a key to the city’s economy but also part of its very consciousness. For my own generation of high school boys […]
All the high excitement, thrills and tensions of railway experience are not the exclusive province of the operating department employees. Many a trackman, carman, and other railway workers have anxieties and thrills in the course of performing their daily tasks. As superintendent of motive power, I had my share of pressing situations that extended a […]
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We have nothing special planned for June 6, 1957 — the 13th anniversary of the D-Day invasion — but it turns out to be a memorable day for the Daily family. My dad is an engineer on the Nickel Plate Road working out of Frankfort, Ind. I am a 22-year-old, newly promoted engineer on the […]
John was one of the many engineers I fired for on passenger trains on the Southern Pacific between Sparks and Carlin, Nev., after World War II. He made his firing date in 1912, and his engineer’s date in 1920. In those days, running a passenger train was like a miracle, for there were 149 engineers […]
At 1:45 p.m. on a sunny spring afternoon in 1955, the pace of activity at the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy depot in Brookfield, Mo., quickened. Due at 1:57 was train 36, the Chicago-bound Kansas City Zephyr — a streamliner led by two sliver E8’s. Automobiles began arriving and discharging passengers and their baggage. Station personnel […]
