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At 17 feet, 5 inches, the caboose cleared all bridges and power lines on its 20-mile road trip. Steve Hendrix Preserving a 25-ton caboose in my backyard wasn’t something that I had always planned on. Sure, I liked trains as a kid and even have a small model railroad layout. But an HO-scale train circling […]
Four-unit locomotive No. 103 of GM’s Electro-Motive Corporation. Electro-Motive FT Tagged “the diesel that did it” by David P. Morgan, longtime editor of Trains Magazine, in a 1960 feature story, four-unit locomotive No. 103 of General Motors’ Electro-Motive Corporation was outshopped at a Grange, IL, plant in November 1939 (the firm later became GM’s Electro-Motive […]
Missouri-Kansas-Texas FP7A No. 78-C shows off the locomotive’s famous bulldog nose at Oklahoma City, Okla. Bill Bryant “COVERED WAGONS.” “CARBODY UNITS.” “STREAMLINERS.” “F UNITS.” Call ’em what you will, when you’re talking the F-for-freight series from General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division, you’re talking the most famous diesel in railroading. Maybe “F” should stand for Face. It’s […]
Norfolk & Western 0-8-0 switcher No. 244 holds the distinction of being the last U.S. reciprocating steam locomotive built for an American Class 1 railroad. It was the final steam engine to emerge from N&W’s Roanoke Shops, delivered to the railroad in December 1953. Norfolk & Western The first 0-8-0 was built in 1844 by […]
Q What does the name “Soo Line” mean? Is it an acronym, an abbreviation, or something else? I’ve asked many rail enthusiasts and gotten many different answers. – Reed Newlin, Maryville, Ill. A The Soo Line got its nickname from its original full name, the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie. “Sault,” pronounced “Soo,” […]
Delaware & Hudson Railway Delaware & Hudson, calling itself the longest-lived transportation company in the U.S., dates to an 1823 charter of the Delaware & Hudson Canal Co. “The D&H” operated the first steam locomotive on rail in the U.S., the Stourbridge Lion, in 1829. Amid modern Northeastern U.S. railroad uncertainty, D&H came under Norfolk […]
Northern Pacific 4-8-4 No. 2662 storms up the 1.8 percent grade at Muir, Mont., in 1947. Warren R. McGee With the general speed-up of passenger train schedules in the 1920s, the need arose for a more powerful version of the 4-8-2. Although it had adequate adhesion, the 4-8-2 lacked the raw horsepower to accelerate a […]
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 […]
Canadian National Canadian National Railways was incorporated June 6, 1919, to operate several carriers that had come under governmental control owing to financial problems: Intercolonial (1913); National Transcontinental (1915); Canadian Northern (1918); Grand Trunk Pacific (1920); and Grand Trunk (1920). The Grand Trunk name survived on the U.S. portion of the Montreal-Portland (Maine) line until […]
Canadian Pacific Railway Canadian Pacific, like its American counterpart Union Pacific, has the “right” name, one that endures, though CP is younger, having been incorporated in 1881 to build from near North Bay, Ontario, to the Pacific Coast at what is now Vancouver, B.C. Post-World War II subsidiaries that maintained some identity included Esquimalt & […]
THE WEAVER division of Quality Craft Models has fielded another terrific O gauge diesel road switcher: The Alco RS-11/RSD-12. Introduced in 1956, the Alco DL701 (RS-11) and DL702 (RSD-12) were designed to replace the RS-3 in the firm’s product line. The venerable RS-3 road switcher sold more than 1,300 in all its variations, and the […]
HAVE YOU EVER seen the Boston Marathon on television, with thousands of runners madly dashing for the front once the gun goes off? Well, that’s how S gauge operators will be acting when they get a look at the new Fairbanks-Morse Train Master from American Models. Surprisingly, it took almost half a century for S […]
