The railroad industry has created more than its share of publicity photographs over the past 150 years. Here, standing in Kalmbach Media’s David P. Morgan Memorial Library, I’m surrounded by tens of thousands of them, mostly 8 x 10 black-and-white prints, all of which came flooding into the company after the 1940 launch of […]
There’s a dusting of snow on the ground as Rio Grande 2-8-8-2 No. 3613 approaches the Tennessee Pass tunnel with an eastbound freight in October 1946. R. H. Kindig photo […]
E7s, E8s, and a pair of Baldwin switchers on trains from Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington wait for horse-racing fans to finish their business at Bowie Race Track in December 1953. H. N. Proctor photo […]
The newness of green-and-yellow F2 No. 401 contrasts with the antiquity of the wooden cars as the Atlantic & Eastern Carolina’s daily passenger train crosses the Trent River at New Bern, N.C., in 1946. The 96-mile A&EC had two F units, both F2s. A&EC photo […]
A clerk tosses two mail delivery pouches out the door of his speeding Railway Post Office car while simultaneously keeping the catcher arm raised in preparation for snagging outbound mail. This is on the Boston & Maine in the late 1940s. Edward J. Howard Jr. photo […]
A Pacific is in charge of Minneapolis & St. Louis’s St. Louis–St. Paul North Star Limited between Chaska and Eden Prairie, Minn., in the 1920s or early ’30s. Don Hofsommer collection […]
An A-B-A set of F3 diesels is on the point of Delaware, Lackawanna & Western train 47, a morning run between Hoboken, N.J., and Binghamton, N.Y., at East Stroudsburg, Pa., in May 1954. Jack Emerick photo […]
In 1934 on the Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes, largest of the Maine two-foot-gauge railroads, a gasoline railcar and baggage trailer are ready to depart the depot at Strong, while 2-6-2 No. 24 prepares to follow with a freight. Peter Cornwall coll. […]
Like trilobites and brachiopods, the paper carcasses of 19th-century railroads seem forever locked away in the sediments of corporate archives and government files. They fill the pages of old Official Guides and Poor’s Manual of the Railroads by the hundreds. Nearly all of them are dormant — but some are not. Consider the case […]
Louisville & Nashville 1807, one of the road’s big fleet of heavy USRS 2-8-2s, moves through Strawberry Yard, south of Louisville, in the late 1940s. Charles B. Castner photo […]
Smack in the middle of the Hawkeye State, Minneapolis & St. Louis 2-6-0 No. 310 crosses the Skunk River with train 342, the return leg of the daily mixed from Marshalltown to Story City, Iowa, in mid-1946. The spindly bridge near Roland necessitated the use of light motive power on the Story City Branch. William F. […]
Western Maryland 2-10-0 1109 leads empty coal hoppers and other freight cars west at famous Helmstetter’s Curve on WM’s main line west of Cumberland, Md. Today the right of way hosts Western Maryland Scenic Railway tourist trains and a bike path. Ed Theisinger photo […]
