It was on March 5, 1850, that the Kentucky legislature approved a charter for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company. The first through train operated between L&N’s namesake end points in 1859. Had it not been for dynamic leadership, vision, money, and some luck, the L&N might not have matured beyond this original route and […]
Branchline Trains’ NYC passenger car In an editorial on the state of the art in passenger car modeling (January 2000 Model Railroader), I wrote that we were still missing the passenger equivalents of the best plastic mass-produced freight car kits. The new HO scale heavyweight coach kit from Branchline Trains is an answer to that […]
Pennsylvania Railroad’s coast-to-coast air-rail service, run jointly with the Santa Fe and Trancontinental Air Transport, was championed by PRR president Gen. William Wallace Atterbury. (A promotional video clip of that service is available on our site. See the link at the bottom of this story.) The Winter 2003 issue of Classic Trains magazine takes an […]
Walthers HO Pullman-Standard lightweight 6-6-4 sleeper A lightweight sleeper from 1942 is the first model of a Pullman-Standard prototype included in Walthers’ current line of HO passenger cars. This “6-6-4” is a model of the second-most-popular type of streamline sleeper, representing a car with six open sections, six roomettes, and four double bedrooms. It comes […]
In 1879 and 1880, a syndicate headed by George I. Seney, a New York banker, assembled the Lake Erie & Western Railway, a line from Fremont, Ohio, to Bloomington, Ill. After a dispute with the New York Central System about the routing of freight, Seney decided to build a line to connect the LE&W to […]
Alco HO DL-109 diesel Life-Like’s Proto 1000 HO DL-109 is a good model of a distinctive and historic diesel locomotive. It combines a dimensionally and proportionally accurate body with a smooth-running, powerful mechanism. The American Locomotive Co. (Alco) built the prototypes as 2,000-hp, dual-engine units for passenger service. Their memorable appearance is due to a […]
By 1919, a three-orange logo had replaced the single piece of fruit that adorned the covers of Golden State travel booklets. The lavish title page of a 1902 Rock Island route guide to its new cross-country passenger train, the Golden State Limited. Rock Island and Southern Pacific inaugurated the train on November 2, 1902. “Every […]
Athearn HO Bombardier bi-level commuter passenger car Athearn has released ready-to-run HO scale models of Bombardier’s bi-level commuter passenger cars. The models include interiors, magnetic knuckle couplers, working diaphragms, and metal wheels. They’re sold in decorated three-car sets of two coaches and a cab car, which is another coach but with a control compartment for […]
Kato N scale Amtrak Superliner passenger cars Kato has introduced sets of all five types of Amtrak’s Superliner I passenger cars to accompany the firm’s Genesis locomotives (reviewed last month). These models are based on the original group of 284 Superliner cars built in 1979. The prototypes of these bi-level cars were built by Pullman-Standard […]
A helicopter view of the westbound City of San Francisco buried in snow on Donner Pass. Doug Wornom collection Sixty years ago, on January 13, 1952, the streamlined transcontinental passenger train City of San Francisco encountered a raging blizzard with 90-mph wind gusts and snow drifts 8 to 12 feet deep that marooned the train […]
The end of the 19th century marked the beginning of a conservation movement in America. Naturalists and environmentalists lobbied the United States government to set aside vast areas of wilderness in the American West as national parks. Growing public awareness and support for the idea prompted Congress to pass the National Park Service Act, which […]
In the Fall 2001 issue of Classic Trains magazine, Senior Editor Dave Ingles recounts his train trip to and from Denver in May 1967. His detailed notes of train consists and time-keeping of arrivals and departures are presented here. May 11, 1967 IC #21, Green Diamond, Springfield, Ill.-St. LouisIC 4023 E8AIC 4109 E9B CofG 812 […]
