Traffic density changes in the past 30 years on freight railroads’ main lines to Chicago reflect factors both geographic and corporate. Geographic factors include the shift of manufacturing from domestic to offshore; air quality regulations that closed high-sulfur Western mines; and general population and economic growth. Corporate factors include the desire of railroad managements to […]
A supplement to the Classic Trains Online Look Back e-mail newsletter A B&LE Pacific with train 13 makes a stop at Adamsville, Pa., 9 miles from the end of its run at Greenville. Fred N. Houser photo Several years ago, in 2001, Norfolk Southern completed a $26 million line change through Erie, Pa., ending 120 […]
The undeniable triumph of U.S. railroading can be seen in this graph of revenue ton-miles: the most basic unit of measurement (hauling one ton of freight one mile) for the work railroads perform. The data for this illustration come from the Association of American Railroads, and are confined to Class I railroads, the largest group […]
Think you’re in a hurry to get to work? The 3,170 trains on this map make it their business to hustle, with a purposefulness matched only by the riders packed aboard their coaches. This is a snapshot of the commuter trains that run every weekday in the Northeast. Without them, some of the biggest cities […]
Before the mega-merger movement of the 1980s, only a few U.S. Class I systems attained route-mileage in five figures. Santa Fe, Southern Pacific, and Milwaukee Road did so by spanning the transcontinental West, Pennsylvania and New York Central bulked up in the East, and Chicago & North Western and Burlington Route (if you include its […]
EDITOR’S NOTE: When we asked the Class I railroads for input on the May 2010 locomotive column on the subject of A.C. traction diesels, Norfolk Southern Assistant Vice President-Mechanical Don Graab responded by email and provided us some great detail. What follows is his perspective on why some railroads order only A.C. diesels, some D.C., […]
Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern SD40-3 no. 6097 is on point of train 486 as it glides through Elm Grove, WI on its way south to Chicago. This train’s counterpart, 487, will head west to the Twin Cities later in the day. Photo by Drew Halverson […]
Norfolk Southern train 119 thunders through Salisbury, N.C., on Jan. 23, 2008, led by SD60 No. 6694. Photo by Clint Renegar […]
Across the country, the stories play out simultaneously on a weekday morning: Two businessmen headed for the 8:03 Boston-bound Acela Express dive into the crowd at New York’s Penn Station; a cluster of Purdue University students shuffles down the platform at Lafayette, Ind., for a ride on the Hoosier State to Chicago; and a conductor […]
What will railroading look like 27 years from now? Will yards be jammed, main lines clogged, and trains backed up from terminals for 30 miles or more? Or will routes be fluid, with freights roaring by every 8 to 10 minutes on main lines three, four, and even six tracks wide? Either future could happen, […]
If you want a glimpse of railroad operations six decades ago, this map of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy provides a window. It’s based on Burlington’s November 1947 freight train operating plan, a chart of schedules furnished to company officers. (Our map was modified to put eastbounds and westbounds on one page and converted to […]
This map of the Kansas City Southern and Louisiana & Arkansas (just prior to their 1939 operational merger) is based on a document undoubtedly produced by the KCS traffic department to show shippers the abundance of natural resources within the roads’ territory. KCS founder Arthur Stilwell had left his secure position with a Hartford insurance […]
