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Railroad reporting marks Railroad cars are identified by two, three, or four letters and by a number of up to six digits. The letters, known as reporting marks, indicate the owner of the car, while the number places it in the owner’s fleet. Reporting marks ending in X indicate ownership by a private concern as […]
The year was 1978, and I was an assistant roadmaster for the Burlington Northern out of Lincoln, Neb. Through February, the winter weather had been mild and dry, and I’d mostly been overseeing repairs to several sets of outfit cars used to house production gang workers. On the first Tuesday of March, however, a […]
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I became a railfan at age three, near the end of World War II. Awaiting the return of my naval officer father, I sat in our West Philadelphia kitchen window facing one of the busiest divisions of the Pennsylvania Railroad — the four-track electrified main line to Harrisburg. The parade of wartime tonnage, plus express […]
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A 2-8-8-2 assists a 4-8-2 on a special Denver & Rio Grande Western train carrying Civilian Conservation Corps workers climbing Tennessee Pass near Mitchell, Colo., in March 1940. R. H. Kindig photo […]
More than a few times, photographs in the Kalmbach library have sent me searching for railroads and places I’ve never encountered, and a few weeks ago some 8 x 10 prints lined up perfectly with travel plans. The destination: Mendocino, Calif., the charming old lumber town up the coast 155 miles from San Francisco. My […]
Engine 1126, one of Western Maryland’s colossal class I-2 Decapods, assists a train upgrade at Helmstetter’s Curve west of Cumberland, Md., in May 1952. Ed Theisinger photo […]
In a scene typical of World War II-era train travel, passengers stream off Baltimore & Ohio and Pennsylvania trains at Washington Union Station. Harold M. Lambert photo […]
Three locomotives – a 2-8-2, 2-8-8-2, and 4-8-4 – start the Rio Grande’s eastbound Royal Gorge out of Minturn, Colo., on Aug. 30, 1947. Ahead for the 18-car train: Tennessee Pass. C. L. Carson photo […]
In the past, railroad dining car meals were something to write home about, positively. A notable summary of this can be found in the lyrics of the popular song Chattanooga Choo-Choo, with its assertion that “dinner in the diner, nothing could be finer.” As private-railroad passenger service declined in the 1960s, however, this […]
