Railroads with cumbersome names that can be a mouthful to say and a headache to remember often opted for nicknames. These aliases served to enhance brand identity and solidify their legacy. Commonly, railroads used city names in their nicknames, as seen with the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific, popularly known as the Milwaukee Road. […]
The Pennsylvania’s one-of-a-kind class S1 6-4-4-6 duplex drive No. 6100 shrugs off an early Chicago winter snow storm as it pauses at Englewood Union Station with the eastbound Manhattan Limited in November 1939. Harold Stirton photo […]
Walk around the halls of Baltimore’s B&O Railroad Museum and you will encounter many first, last, and only railroad objects. There is the William Mason, an 1856 4-4-0 steam locomotive that pulled Abraham Lincoln’s train as he snuck through Baltimore prior to his presidential inauguration. You will see B&O No. 51, an EMC EA, the […]
An A-B-B-A set of Santa Fe FT diesels leads a westbound freight just below famous Tehachapi Loop in 1949. This train met an eastbound Southern Pacific freight at Walong siding on the Loop itself; steam from the SP train’s cab-forward helper is visible in the distance. Linn H. Westcott photo […]
Handsome Western Maryland 4-6-2 No. 204 is ready to depart the road’s Hillen Street station in Baltimore with the daily train to Hagerstown, Md., in April 1951. Russ Wilcox photo […]
[Ed. — This adventure is excerpted from a story originally appearing in Trains, September 1984. It, along with 45 other railroad stories, can be found in a forthcoming Trains/Classic Train book: Tales of the Rails, due out in March 2026. Visit shop.trains.com to order your copy.] On June 27, 1955, I witnessed a veteran locomotive […]
Santa Fe trains 93, the West Texas Express, and 94, the Eastern Express, were the Amarillo–Lubbock connection for the San Francisco Chief. Between 1955 and 1965, the trains looked like this: an E8M (rebuilt from an E1), baggage-express car, coach, and sleeper. Fred M. Springer photo […]
In fall 1953, Canadian National 4-6-2 5545 simmers inside the roundhouse at Moncton, New Brunswick. Philip R. Hastings photo […]
Class A 4-4-2 No. 2 hauls the Milwaukee Road’s newly launched Hiawatha up the hill and around the curve out of Chicago Union Station in mid-1935. Alexander Maxwell photo […]
Looking west at Frankfort, Ind., in 1944, we see the westbound yard with its east-end ladder angling off to the right, and in the distance the eastbound yard’s east ladder running the other way. Beyond the east yard ladder are the icing platform and the ice plant. Jay Williams photo […]
In the Nickel Plate Road’s roundhouse at Conneaut, Ohio — one of the last citadels of high-speed steam freight locomotives — Berkshire 731 and another engine rest on March 16, 1957. Classic Trains coll. […]
Being a safety supervisor at a small regional railroad entailed more than being a statistician. When promoted to the position on the Maine Central in early 1982, I was part of a two-man team, tasked with promoting safety. This required meeting train crews, riding with them, learning the rudiments of their tasks; talking with engineering […]
