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After unloading at Seattle Union Station, the Milwaukee Road’s Olympian Hiawatha was towed south behind steam, backward and with diesels still attached, to a wye, where the train was turned to head for its ultimate destination, Tacoma. Eastbound, the process was reversed. In this late-1940s scene, 2-8-0 No. 1225 does the honors. Stuart B. Hertz photo […]
Two of Santa Fe’s courier-nurses show off newly redesigned uniforms as they pose with one of the road’s Hi-Level coaches in 1969. ATSF photo […]
Duluth & Northeastern 2-8-0 No. 16, pictured without her smokebox door inside the short line’s enginehouse in September 1954, went into a river in 1916, was caught in a wildfire in 1918, and was inside the old enginehouse when it burned down in 1952. Philip R. Hastings photo […]
Pennsylvania Railroad class B6sb 0-6-0 No. 4027 has a small audience as it switches cars in Williamsport, Pa., in 1950. A. C. Kalmbach photo […]
Chesapeake & Ohio 500 was one of three class M-1 steam-turbine-electric locomotives built by Baldwin-Westinghouse in 1946–47 for the new Chessie streamliner. But the road de-emphasized its passenger business, the Chessie never ran, and the M-1’s led short lives. Classic Trains coll. […]
An A-B-A trio of 1,500 h.p. Alco freight diesels (in later nomenclature, two FA1’s and an FB1) rolls a train on the Lehigh & New England, a 178-mile anthracite hauler and Pennsylvania-New Jersey-New York bridge line that dieselized in 1949. Alco-GE photo […]
Central Railroad of New Jersey box-cab No. 1000, built by an Alco/General Electric/Ingersoll-Rand consortium, gained the title of “first commercially successful diesel-electric locomotive” when CNJ put it to work on October 22, 1925. After a three-decade career, the unit was retired to the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore. CNJ photo […]
The many faces of Conrail Conrail, the amalgamation of many financially struggling Eastern railroads both big and small, was born April 1, 1976. When it began, the system operated thousands of locomotives on about 19,000 route-miles in 15 states and two Canadian provinces. Its mandate: to revitalize rail service in the Northeast and Midwest as […]
Missouri Pacific 2-8-4 No. 1119 rolls a southbound freight over a new highway bridge at Austin, Texas, in 1948. Bruce F. Wilson photo […]
An A-B-B-A quartet of Southern Pacific F units dressed in the distinctive “Black Widow” livery lift an eastbound freight up into the town of Tehachapi, Calif., in 1949. Exhaust from a 4-8-8-2 cab-forward helper rises in the distance. Linn Westcott photo […]
An aerial view from the 1940s shows the roundhouse for Cincinnati Union Terminal, opened in 1933. Marsh Photographic Studios photo […]
Crowds swarm around Burlington Route 9901 and 9902, the original three-car Twin Zephyr diesel trains, during a publicity event before the pair entered service between Chicago and the Twin Cities in April 1935. CB&Q photo […]
