Page 28 – Trains

The year was 1978, and I was an assistant roadmaster for the Burlington Northern out of Lincoln, Neb. Through February, the winter weather had been mild and dry, and I’d mostly been overseeing repairs to several sets of outfit cars used to house production gang workers. On the first Tuesday of March, however, a […]

F is for freight

A black-and-white photo of a long coal train approaching the camera, seen from a bridge over the tracks

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The day the GG1 fleet called in sick

Blizzard around passenger train with electric locomotive

I became a railfan at age three, near the end of World War II. Awaiting the return of my naval officer father, I sat in our West Philadelphia kitchen window facing one of the busiest divisions of the Pennsylvania Railroad — the four-track electrified main line to Harrisburg. The parade of wartime tonnage, plus express […]

Minnesota identity crisis

A black-and-white photo of an early diesel switcher moving a Great Northern boxcar through a snowy landscape

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Belfast & Moosehead Lake No. 18

A steam locomotive backs its freight train toward a trackside water tank

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CCC special on Tennessee Pass

A 2-8-8-2 assists a 4-8-2 on a special Denver & Rio Grande Western train carrying Civilian Conservation Corps workers climbing Tennessee Pass near Mitchell, Colo., in March 1940. R. H. Kindig photo […]

A brief encounter with Northwestern Pacific

Two steam locomotives handle passenger train cross river bridge

More than a few times, photographs in the Kalmbach library have sent me searching for railroads and places I’ve never encountered, and a few weeks ago some 8 x 10 prints lined up perfectly with travel plans. The destination: Mendocino, Calif., the charming old lumber town up the coast 155 miles from San Francisco. My […]