Santa Fe’s Madame Queen deserves some love

Smoking steam locomotives with freight train in mountains

  Family road trips usually involve self-inflicted detours to see park steam engines, “stuffed and mounted” for the sake of local posterity. They’re usually easy to find, thanks to J. David Conrad’s standard reference “Steam Locomotive Directory of North America, Vols. I and II,” which I’ve consulted for decades, or, in a pinch, Google. A […]

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Meridian & Bigbee Railroad history

Black Meridian & Bigbee Railroad diesel locomotive passing small wooden station

The Meridian & Bigbee Railroad “possessed all the credentials required for admittance to the Typical Southern Short Line Club,” wrote J. Parker Lamb in Trains’ July 1959 issue. Those included secondhand steam locomotives, a leisurely schedule, and insufficient revenue tonnage. Yet, the road was able to overcome those deficiencies to become a sought-after bridge route […]

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GTW gathering place

20150618

Four Grand Trunk Western passenger trains meet at Durand, Mich., in July 1950. A streamlined 4-8-4 has just arrived with No. 17; visible east of the depot is a car from No. 38, in from Alpena; Pacific 5633 is on No. 21; and Pacific 5629, having cut off from No. 56 to take water, waits […]

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Frisco E7 posing as an E8

20150615

St. Louis-San Francisco No. 2005 Winchester has the grilles and portholes of an E8, but it’s really an E7, as indicated by the louvers behind the cab door. For the sake of appearance, Frisco modified its E7As to look like its E8As. All were red with gold striping and silver trucks. SLSF photo […]

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D&RGW meet at Tolland, Colo.

20150608

Riding the pilot beam of a big 2-8-8-2, the head brakeman on Rio Grande Extra 3602 West waves to the Exposition Flyer as his freight pulls into the siding at Tolland, Colo., to meet the Oakland–Chicago Limited. W.C. Stearns photo […]

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B&O freight on the old Buffalo & Susquehanna

20150630

Consolidation 3127 climbs toward Cutler Summit with the first cut of a train the elderly 2-8-0 is doubling up the hill. This is Baltimore & Ohio’s former Buffalo & Susquehanna line near the New York-Pennsylvania boundary in September 1955. Philip R. Hastings photo […]

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