Delaware & Hudson passenger trains remembered

Wooden coaches on Albany–Binghamton train 208 at Albany Union Station, circa 1945–46.

Delaware & Hudson passenger trains     All through July 2023, Classic Trains editors are celebrating the grit and grandeur of the Delaware & Hudson in its bicentennial year. Please enjoy this photo gallery of Kansas City Southern passenger trains selected from the files in Kalmbach Media‘s David P. Morgan Library.   Only from Trains.com! […]

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A to Z: Trains in movies

The Denver and Rio Grande movie

Trains in movies Trains in movies: Looking for a brief retreat that is fun, fairly inexpensive, and easily accessible all year round? Try exploring the world of trains from the comfort of your own home. Enjoy the good, the bad, and the ugly in railroad movies from the past. Robberies, explosions, romance, comedy, suspense … […]

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Phoebe Snow – passenger train advertising icon

Brochure cover showing rear of passenger train

Phoebe Snow as a person was an invention by advertising men a half century before the streamliner. A new management led by William Haynes Trues­­dale had taken charge of Lackawanna in 1899 and was turning the sys­tem from a 19th-century pike into a 20th-century railroad. The makeover included the passenger service. DL&W’s passenger engines used […]

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Delaware & Hudson history remembered

Blue-and-gray diesel locomotives with freight train of Delaware & Hudson history

Delaware & Hudson history dates from 1823, when the Delaware & Hudson Canal Co. was chartered to build a canal from Honesdale, Pa., to Rondout, N. Y., on the Hudson River. The canal would carry anthracite coal from mines near Carbondale, Pa., to New York City. The mines would be served by a gravity railroad […]

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Southern Pacific locomotive roster overview

Red-and-gray diesel locomotive with passenger train

The Southern Pacific locomotive roster was expansive. A headlight breaking the horizon in the 1960s meant one thing; you never were sure what the motive power would be. In its latter years, despite having hundreds of Electro-Motive Division Geeps and SDs and General Electric U-Boats of all models, SP would assemble whatever was available on […]

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Bicentennial diesel locomotives photo gallery

Red-white-and-blue Bicentennial diesel locomotive

There were more than 200 red-white-and-blue Bicentennial diesel locomotives. Many “Bicens” were specially renumbered, but some (the 76s, 200s, 1776s, 1976s, etc.) were not. Bicentennials roamed the rails in every state (beyond the “lower 48” were two Alaska Railroad FP7s and a rail historical group’s tiny GE in Hawaii); in Panama (a 5-foot-gauge Alco RSC3); […]

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Delaware & Hudson locomotives remembered

Silver-and-blue diesel Delaware & Hudson locomotives in yard

Delaware & Locomotive locomotives demonstrated some of the greatest variety for a railroad its size.     Steam locomotives on the D&H were distinctive. Its roster was dominated by 2-8-0 and 4-6-0 types, but it also had notable fleets of 4-6-2s, 4-8-4s, and 4-6-6-4s. After World War I, the road stuck with the 2-8-0 long […]

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Pennsylvania 6200 turbine locomotive

Front view of Pennsylvania 6200 turbine locomotive

Pennsylvania 6200 turbine locomotive was an experimental locomotive that served on passenger trains in Indiana and Ohio. But it is perhaps best known as the Lionel No. 671 Pennsylvania Turbine.     The first of several turbine projects the Pennsylvania considered was also the only one that produced an actual locomotive: steam-turbine-mechanical No. 6200. Pennsy […]

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Heaviest 4-6-4 Hudsons: Chesapeake & Ohio’s L2a

Heaviest 4-6-4 Hudson steam locomotive under signal bridge

Ask someone to associate a railroad with the heaviest 4-6-4 Hudsons and they’ll likely guess “New York Central.” After all, it was NYC and its supplier, American Locomotive Co., that first developed the 4-6-4 in 1927, and it was NYC that gave the engine its famous name: Hudson, named for the river the Central’s main […]

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William N. Deramus III and Deramus red locomotives

Red-and-white diesel locomotives by shop facility

The three railroads that shared Deramus red locomotives also shared the leadership of William N. Deramus III. He began working on the Wabash in 1939 and served in the U.S. Army Transportation Corps in British India before becoming general manager of the Kansas City Southern after the war. He died Nov. 15, 1989, at age […]

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Blue Streak Merchandise

Streamlined diesel locomotive with Blue Streak Merchandise freight train

Was the Blue Streak Merchandise the last Great American Freight Train?     “You define a passenger train by its cars, its menu, its route — even its patrons,” says railroad historian Fred W. Frailey in his 1991 book on the Blue Streak. “But the Blue Streak defined the railroads over which it runs — seized […]

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