Cut-glass partitions with imagery representing the mining and timber industries decorate the interior of a 36-seat dining car built for Great Northern’s Empire Builder in 1950. Great Northern photo […]
Empire Builder diner
Train Topic: Fallen Flags
The Milwaukee Road Hiawatha passenger trains
Milwaukee Road Hiawatha passenger trains are the long-lasting legacy of a Midwestern railroad plagued with underperformance and mismanagement — right up until its merger with the much smaller Soo Line in 1986. Rather than recount the bad times, join us for a look back at the Hiawatha trains over the years. Only from Trains.com. Twin […]
Al Kalmbach captures train time at Calera, Ala.
Some photographs grab your imagination and won’t let go. Case in point: this simple but quietly affecting portrait of what I’m guessing are some teenage girls giving two friends a sendoff as they board Louisville & Nashville train No. 3 on the platform of the joint L&N and Southern Railway station in Calera, […]
Rock Island at Englewood
Handsome Rock Island 4-6-2 No. 922 steps across the Pennsylvania Railroad diamonds at Englewood Union Station as it departs with a Chicago–Blue Island suburban train in July 1952. W. H. N. Rossiter photo […]
Reading switcher shoves frozen Doodlebug
It could have been a Trains News Wire headline: “Reading switcher shoves frozen Doodlebug.” You won’t believe the story. I awoke and gazed out the window of my home in Coatesville, Pa., to see a veritable torrent of fluffy snowflakes falling. They were burying the landscape of my hometown in a wonderland of whiteness. The […]
Minnesota city builds “railroad depot” water pump station
EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. – It’s been decades since the last Chicago & North Western freight train rumbled through Eden Prairie on former Minneapolis & St. Louis tracks, and even longer since the M&StL depot stood along the right-of-way. Yet if you look along that right-of-way today, there’s a new “station” – a replica of a […]
Nickel Plate’s big bridge in Cleveland
Three GP9s head a freight across the Nickel Plate Road’s double-track lift bridge over the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland in the late 1950s as the caboose of another train leaves the bridge. Herbert H. Harwood Jr. photo […]
Cool railroadiana, a dandy depot, and train repair parts on Bob’s Train Box 86
This episode, host Bob Keller shows an old New York Central coal service directory. It was a book the railroad gave to customers and those that needed to know the details of its lines in the Appalachians that served mines and loadouts. Then The host shows off a resin depot that looks at home on […]
North Shore passenger service photo gallery
Enjoy this North Shore passenger service photo gallery selected from among the Chicago, North Shore & Milwaukee Railroad files in Kalmbach Media‘s David P. Moran Library. This gallery celebrates the history, heritage, and Electro-glamour that was the high-speed North Shore interurban railroad. This North Shore passenger service photo gallery was first published in August 2015. […]
Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee remembered
Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee history is tied to the transit needs of Chicago and Milwaukee. In 1891 the Waukegan & North Shore Rapid Transit Co. was incorporated — a trolley line for the city of Waukegan, Ill., on the shore of Lake Michigan, 36 miles north of Chicago. In 1897, by which time it […]
20th Century Limited: ‘The Greatest Train Ever Made’
New York Central’s 20th Century Limited was dubbed “The Greatest Train Ever Made.” In the first half of the 20th century, New York and Chicago were the two largest, most dynamic cities in the U.S. and titans of commerce. Big business demanded in-person company meetings, thus the need for fast travel between New York and […]
Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee equipment remembered
Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee equipment set it apart from other electric interurban lines. Please enjoy this photo gallery selected from files in Kalmbach Media‘s David P. Morgan Library. Each month since October 2019, Classic Trains editors have selected one Fallen Flag to honor. A Fallen Flag is a railroad whose name and heritage have succumbed […]
