Alco RSD15 road switcher Some locomotive models seem to come and go and hardly get noticed. Nobody can say that about the Alco RSD15. The six-axle mainline road switcher concept was still in its infancy in the mid-1950s, with many railroads sticking with various four-axle locomotive designs that had been popular for decades. But a […]
EMD F40C diesel locomotives were six-axle, 3,200-hp units built for Chicago-area commuter service in 1974. They were found on two Milwaukee Road-operated routes out of Union Station, one west to Elgin and one north to Fox Lake. The units had a cowl body like the Amtrak SDP40F of 1973, but used an alternator to […]
Erie Railroad passenger trains: The Erie Railroad is Classic Trains’ railroad of the month for October 2023. All this month you’ll find interesting articles detailing the history of the Erie in text and photographs. Please enjoy this Erie Railroad passenger trains photo gallery, originally published in March 2016 and selected from the archives of […]
Locomotives with two diesel engines: The recent announcement by Union Pacific to donate a portion of its heritage steam and diesel fleet has lowered the number of Class I railroads owning double diesel locomotives to one. A double diesel locomotive features two prime movers on a single frame to increase the horsepower beyond what’s available […]
Locomotive paint schemes In an era when passengers and passenger trains were an important part of the revenue stream, railroads generally did their best to keep their equipment clean. If the marketing department was going to promote classy passenger locomotive paint schemes, railroaders did their best to make sure the rolling stock shined. Whenever a […]
Bellevue Yard It’s over 5 miles long. It’s capable of serving a hundred trains a day. It’s the center point of five of Norfolk Southern’s busiest lines. Officially known as Moorman Yard, Norfolk Southern’s Bellevue hump yard is one of the largest in the railroad’s system. Centrally located in the northern Ohio heartland, it’s a […]
Does the world need another book about the Denver & Rio Grande Western narrow gauge? Someone might reasonably ask. Of all railroads with a literature disproportionate to its relative economic importance, the D&RGW is Exhibit A. To underscore the point, I stopped into the Kalmbach Media library to do some rudimentary research: when […]
Mind-blowing facts about the GM Aerotrain By the 1950s it was clear that the passenger train was not the wave of the future. Automobiles and airliners were the next chapter in personal transportation for the United States. In some cases, however, the railroads wanted one more round in the fight to retain and regain passengers. […]
EMD F2 diesel locomotive For a number of years, there was a streamlined diesel road locomotive hiding in plain sight, and it was only the savviest of fans with a penchant for details and numbers that could ferret them out from the rest of the herd. It is the EMD F2. Only 104 were built […]
I wrote last month about working grain trains west as a young brakeman. This month’s story, entitled “Trust me,” is from late 2008 when I was working as a locomotive engineer. In my 42 years on the railroad, the last 30 as an engineer, I took pride in being qualified on three mountain-grade territories: Stampede […]
Erie Railroad history starts, surprisingly, with a canal. “The Work of the Age” was a proclamation by New York City’s Common Council upon the opening of the 300-mile New York & Erie Railway in 1851, “Erie” referring to one of the Great Lakes. New York City had become the natural gateway to the […]
For much of the first half of the 20th century, the 2-8-2 Mikado was the dominant freight locomotive of the steam era. With its medium weight and medium power, it became the go-to, general-purpose engine — sort of the GP38 of its era. Consider how the World War I-era United States Railroad Administration divvied up […]
