Two interurban cars and a bus stand at the Sacramento Northern’s ramshackle shop complex in Oakland in 1940. Linn H. Westcott photo […]
Sacramento Northern rail and bus
Section: Photo of the Day
RDC test on Baltimore & Annapolis
On Dec. 9, 1961, Budd Company RDC1 demonstrator 2960 approaches a grade crossing in Glen Burnie, Md., during an 18-day experimental resumption of passenger service on former interurban Baltimore & Annapolis. Today, Glen Burnie is the end of a light-rail line from Baltimore. Ara Mesrobian photo […]
Olympian Hiawatha double bedroom
A rendering from a Milwaukee Road brochure for the 1947 Olympian Hiawatha shows a couple enjoying a double bedroom in one of the train’s Lake-series 10-6 sleepers. Milwaukee Road photo […]
NYC 4-6-2 departing Detroit
New York Central 4-6-2 4754 pulls out of Detroit’s Michigan Central Station with train 305 for Toledo and Cleveland on June 5, 1948. Ford Motor Co. has announced plans to convert the towering MC depot into its new headquarters. Elmer Treolar photo […]
New Orleans station concourse
New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal, opened in 1954 as one of America’s last pre-Amtrak big-city passenger terminals, featured an open-air concourse at the end of its 12 stub-end tracks. James G. La Vake photo […]
Milwaukee Road hostler
A hostler at the Milwaukee Road’s engine terminal near 35th Street in Milwaukee uses a water crane to top off the tender of a steam locomotive. The Fairbanks-Morse diesel on the next track hints that steam is on borrowed time in this April 1951 photo. Linn H. Westcott photo […]
Mail catch on the fly
Great Northern mail clerk Ben Russell grabs the pouch from the catcher after making the catch at Bethel, Minn., while working the Duluth & St. Paul Railway Post Office in fall 1968. This was one of the few RPOs to survive the big cutbacks of 1967. Don Hofsommer photo […]
Rocking at Joliet
Two Rock Island E units lead the Chicago–Los Angeles Golden State into Joliet (Ill.) Union Station in fall 1951. Wallace W. Abbey photo […]
D&H PA on a swing bridge
A PA-powered Delaware & Hudson passenger train crosses a center-bearing plate girder swing bridge on the Canadian Pacific at Lachine, Quebec, in the late 1960s or early ’70s. Tom Nelligan photo […]
High-wheeled North Western 4-6-4
Chicago & North Western 4-6-4 No. 4004, having brought the San Francisco-bound Gold Coast in from Chicago, backs out of Omaha Union Station for servicing in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on June 6, 1953. Alco built nine of these 84-inch-drivered Hudsons for C&NW in 1938. R. R. Malinoski photo […]
Elephantine 2-10-4s
Making like two great pachyderms joined tail to nose, Pennsylvania Railroad J1 2-10-4s 6486 and 6488 doublehead a coal train out of Columbus, Ohio, with a coal train for the Lake Erie docks at Sandusky in September 1955. Philip R. Hastings photo […]
East Broad Top by night
Mikado No. 14 rides the turntable at the narrow-gauge coal hauler’s headquarters of Orbisonia, Pa., in July 1952. The road would shut down in 1956, then partially reopen for tourists in 1960. Philip R. Hastings photo […]
