Railfans festoon the caboose roofs and crowd the Alco diesel switcher’s cab during an excursion on the Fonda, Johnstown & Gloversville in 1950. Edward Theisinger photo […]
Shortline railfan special
Section: Photos and Videos
Santa Fe’s Crookton line change
In 1960, the Santa Fe opened a 44-mile line between Williams and Crookton, Ariz., to reduce grades and curvature. This view shows one of the new line’s deep cuts from the fireman’s seat on an F unit. Donald Sims photo […]
Santa Fe FT diesels
An A-B-B set of Santa Fe FT diesels rolls a 127-car freight extra west at Galesburg, Ill., in June 1953. R. R. Malinoski photo […]
Old trainshed on the CV
Nearly new Central Vermont GP9 4557 leads freight train 201, whose first car is a baggage car, through the old wooden trainshed at Essex Junction, Vt., in 1957. The venerable structure was demolished by 1960. Jim Shaughnessy photo […]
Nighttime at Seattle Union Station
A switcher tacks a head-end car to a train consist in the wee hours at Seattle, Wash., in 1948. Union Pacific and Milwaukee Road used Union Station; Great Northern and Northern Pacific used King Street Station, just out of view to the left. Robert Gazay photo […]
New Haven steam under repair
Three Pacifics share the shop floor with several 2-10-2s at the New Haven Railroad’s system locomotive backshop in Readville, Mass. Classic Trains coll. […]
Kansas City Southern 2-10-4
Kansas City Southern’s last new steam locomotives were 10 class J 2-10-4s built by Lima in 1937. As this postwar photo of No. 905 indicates, they were massive machines — those are 70-inch drivers under that giant boiler. Harold K. Vollrath photo […]
Hudson scooping water
New York Central J-1 Hudson 5236 takes water from a track pan near Huron, Ohio, in the 1940s. Water columns stand ready to serve engines that stop for water. Richard J. Cook photo […]
Fuel train on the Tonopah & Goldfield
Built during the gold rush years of 1904-05, Nevada’s Tonopah & Goldfield ran 100 miles southeast from an SP connection in the desert near the California border. An Air Force base near Goldfield brought traffic to the road during World War II — these two slide-valve 2-8-0s are hauling aviation fuel — but the boom didn’t […]
Flexi-Vans on the IC
Flexi-Vans on the IC The Illinois Central was one of several roads that used Flexi-Vans for mail. Here, two Flexi-Van flatcars (four containers) are tucked behind the engines, and a third flatcar with a single container brings up the rear, on the Land O’ Corn at Rockford, Ill., in March 1967. Mike Schafer photo […]
Early Pennsy piggyback
A single-axle Pennsylvania Railroad trailer with the “Keystone Merchandise Service” logo on the front is positioned on a flatcar in Chicago in 1954. Soon the PRR led the formation of Trailer Train, known today as TTX. Pennsylvania Railroad photo […]
Doubleheaded Pennsy 2-10-4s
Pennsylvania class J1 Texas types 6486 and 6488 move Lake Erie-bound coal north out of Columbus, Ohio, in September 1955. PRR’s 125-strong J1 fleet of 1942–44, based on a Chesapeake & Ohio design, accounted for more than a quarter of all 2-10-4s built. Philip R. Hastings photo […]
