A few weeks ago, I made an embarrassing blunder in the pages of Classic Trains. In a brief, bylined description of the Budd Rail Diesel Car, or RDC, I had casually and quite spectacularly goofed by describing its diesel engines as “rooftop.” Yes, rooftop. What was I thinking? I knew its V-6 diesel […]
A Southern Pacific 4-8-8-2 leads a long string of troop sleepers on snowy Donner Pass in the mid-1940s. Pullman-Standard built 2,400 of the boxcar-like sleepers between October 1943 and May 1946. Classic Trains coll. […]
Passengers fill the rear platform of the observation car on Rio Grande’s Scenic Limited at Denver Union Station in about 1928. Those folks have the best seats in the house for the climb up the Front Range. George Beam photo […]
Several boxcars await loading at three classic wooden elevators along the Santa Fe at Dumas, Texas, in late summer 1936. In spite of the Dust Bowl, there’s still wheat to be loaded. Arthur Rothstein, Library of Congress photo […]
A Santa Fe 4-8-4 powers a long string of new Santa Fe Refrigerator Department reefers near Winslow, Ariz., in the mid-1940s. Santa Fe photo […]
Santa Fe Hi-Level step-down coach A passenger ascends the central stairway into the upper level of one of the Santa Fe’s 1956 double-deck Hi-Level coaches. The low window beyond the man standing shows that this is one of the “step-down” cars with an end stairway for access to standard-height cars. Santa Fe photo […]
Pittsburgh & Lake Erie 2-8-4 No. 9401 leads a southbound freight through the station at Beaver, Pa., in June 1948. The seven P&LE Berkshires, delivered in May and June 1948, were Alco’s last steam locomotives. Richard J. Cook photo […]
F. C. Jones works the model board inside brand-new Clara Street tower, part of the project that produced New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal in 1954. James G. La Vake photo […]
An employee uses a car mover to shift a Milwaukee Road boxcar on a side track. Car movers have hinged spurs that bite into the rail. Pushing down on the handle exerts upward pressure on the wheel to start the car in motion. Advance Car Mover Co. photo […]
My first railroad book has stuck with me ever since my parents gave it to me when I was 9. Lucius Beebe’s “Hear the Train Blow” was a massive scrapbook of American railroad history, full of the author’s outrageous prose and uncanny skill at digging up illustration. I still love looking through it 62 years […]
Missouri Pacific 4-6-2 6621 and St. Louis-Southwestern 4-6-0 663 await their next assignments at the Memphis Union Station engine house in October 1950. James G. La Vake photo […]
Three 2-6-0s (rebuilt from U.S. Army 0-6-0s) team up on a Midland Terminal ore train in the Cripple Creek mining district near Bull Hill, Colo., in October 1948. The MT shut down in February 1949. Donald Duke photo […]
