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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 […]
Santa Fe F7 No. 311 prepares to depart Track 5 at Los Angeles Union Station with the first San Diegan of the day, while the Rock Island/Southern Pacific Golden State, just in from Chicago, stands on Track 4. William D. Middleton photo […]
An F3 leads the five cars of Monon’s Chicago–Indianapolis Tippecanoe across the Grand Calumet River in Hammond, Ind., on May 30, 1953. R. R. Malinoski photo […]
Union Pacific 2-8-2 2250 assists 2-8-8-2 3572, acquired from the Chesapeake & Ohio to move wartime freight, up Sherman Hill in Wyoming sometime in 1946. R. H. Kindig photo […]
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); […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
In November 1953, Canadian Pacific 4-6-0 No. 1105, being prepared for a day’s work at Chipman, New Brunswick, steams ahead of 4-4-0 No. 29, which the Ten-Wheeler had just pulled out of the enginehouse. Philip R. Hastings photo […]
Family road trips usually involve self-inflicted detours to see park steam engines, “stuffed and mounted” for the sake of local posterity. They’re usually easy to find, thanks to J. David Conrad’s standard reference “Steam Locomotive Directory of North America, Vols. I and II,” which I’ve consulted for decades, or, in a pinch, Google. A […]
