“Wee Jimmie” Brown examines a Canadian Pacific switch stand beside the Don Mills Road crossing in North Toronto. His fascination soon turned to fear when a doubleheaded freight came along. Alvin Brown Despite his son’s concern for their safety, Alvin Brown managed to photograph an eastbound freight coming and going at the crossing. Two photos, […]
After a 2-10-2 and 4-8-4 stalled on MoPac’s Kirkwood Hill, an 0-8-0 and caboose couple up to render assistance. Joe Collias Heading west from St. Louis, Missouri Pacific trains faced the 6-mile-long, 1-percent grade known as Kirkwood Hill. Normal train length was 100 cars, powered by one of the rebuilt 2101-class 4-8-4s and led by […]
Splitting and combining trains was a well-practiced ritual at Jacksonville Union Station. David W. Salter From 1954 until I was 11 years old in 1965, we traveled, by Pullman, from 30th Street Station in Philadelphia to North Miami, using either the Seaboard Air Line or Atlantic Coast Line south of Richmond, Va. Until the Florida […]
The engineer of Southern SD35 3007, preparing to depart East St. Louis in April 1968, invited me up for a cab ride—but logistics intervened. J. David Ingles Over the years, I’d bet most of us non-railroaders who’ve been out taking train pictures have received a spontaneous invitation from an engine crew we encountered. And how […]
GG1 4903 heads a westbound rush-hour commuter train at Swarthmore, Pa., sometime during World War II. A mainline motor like this was a rarity on PRR’s West Chester Branch. George Gillespie As were many railroads during the busy World War II years, the Pennsylvania Railroad was hard-pressed for equipment. Many of us remember seeing locomotives and […]
Tucumcari, July 1963: Nameless Los Angeles–Chicago train 40 has arrived with SP power and will depart behind Rock Island FP7 409. The RDC foreground is on the rear of Rock Island 22 for Memphis. Richard J. Anderson It was a hot day in the summer of 1963. I was driving from my home in Iowa […]
Louisville & Nashville E8 No. 787 leads the head-end cars and lone coach of Evansville–St. Louis train 10 out of East St. Louis in May 1968. R. R. Wallin, George W. Hamlin coll. “No, that train doesn’t stop here. You’ll have to go up to ‘Hoptown’ to get it,” was the less-than-helpful information from the […]
An E unit leads a train through Berwyn, Ill., on a lazy day in August 1963. Such scenes were part of daily life along the Burlington’s triple-track main west of Chicago. Larry Kostka It didn’t matter how often you rode the trains, or even if you did at all. Growing up in the postwar era […]
Like many old steam men, PRR engineman W. A. Eby disliked diesels, but he manages a smile in the cab of S12 No. 8734 working the Bellefonte local in 1957. Michael Hauk collection I never knew Walter A. Eby, my dad’s foster father. He passed away in 1963, when I was two years old. I […]
Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo’s two ex-NYC J-1e’s were among the Hudsons that captivated a Buffalo boy in the late 1940s. Frank Clodfelter While growing up in Cleveland and Buffalo after World War II, a close encounter with a Hudson-type locomotive was just a train ride away. My first memory was as a four-year-old. My family […]
Erie RS2 904 clatters into the Lackawanna’s Hoboken Terminal with a Main Line local in 1956. Richard H. Young Youth is wasted on young people, so the saying goes. Kids don’t have the … well … maturity to know what’s special in their world. Watch the crowds at Disneyland. It’s the adults who are agog […]
On June 15, 1972 — six years before author Olson’s ride on it — Illinois Central Gulf SD40 6000 pulls into Markham Yard at Homewood, Ill., with GP40 3011. J. David Ingles I have always had a thing for “class units,” that is, the first in a series, and “my engine” is Illinois Central 6000, […]
