The Center for Railroad Photography & Art and Chicago author Sandra Jackson-Opoku have received 2022 research grants, each worth $2,500, from the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society. R&LHS President Robert Holzweiss said “the proposals could not be more different, but both were adjudged to be worthy of our support. The Center applies every year and often […]
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 […]
At the beginning of 2022, no one would have considered Silvis, Ill. a center of the railroad preservation community. The massive former Rock Island shop facility had just been downgraded by owner National Railway Equipment. It was closed in March 2021 as part of a plan to consolidate NRE rail operations to its shops in […]
Trains News Wire continues our review of the top stories of 2022. We’ll count down the Top 10 stories of the year, as voted on by Trains editors, columnists, and correspondents, beginning Dec. 26. As a prelude, we’ll be looking at major stories that didn’t make that list. Today: Preservation. While some preservation stories did […]
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 […]
HAMILTON, Ohio — The move is in progress today for the first of two structures that make up the Hamilton, Ohio, railroad station — a structure dating to the 1850s and with a history including visits from at least four U.S. presidents. The station, donated to the city by CSX Transportation, is being located from […]
SALT LAKE CITY — A boat used by Southern Pacific to help build its route across the Great Salt Lake has resurfaced as a result of the lake’s shrinking water level. KTVX-TV reports the W.E. Marsh No. 4, which first set sail on the lake in 1902, has reappeared as the lake’s water level reaches […]
ESSEX, Mont. — The Izaak Walton Inn, the trackside property along BNSF main line adjacent to Glacier National Park that is a longtime railfan destination, is under new ownership. The Daily Inter Lake reports that Brian Kelly, who has owned the property since 2006, has sold it to Loge Camps, a hotel marketed toward outdoors […]
East Broad Top Railroad locomotives make up a big piece to a bigger puzzle that is the preserved narrow-gauge railroad in Rockhill, Pennsylvania. The 33-mile line served the iron furnaces and coal mines from 1874 until freight haulage came to an end on April 6, 1956. Tourist operations on a short section of the railroad […]
MILTON, Ontario — The Halton County Radial Railway Museum closed its 2022 season with its “Christmas On the Rails” event Dec. 10-11, operating multiple cars from its collection of more than 50 pieces of 19th- and 20th-century equipment. Among cars in operation were London & Port Stanley Railway interurban car No. 8 (built in 1919 […]
ALTOONA, Pa. — The first new Belpaire steam-locomotive firebox built in Altoona in 76 years is taking shape at the Railroaders Memorial Museum. Over the last week, employees of consultant FMW Solutions LLC and volunteers have fabricated a new firebox for former Pennsylvania Railroad Class K4s 4-6-2 steam passenger engine No. 1361 (PRR Juniata Shops, […]
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 […]
