Nighttime at Seattle Union Station

Seattle Union Station 1948

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 […]

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MR&T blue diesel locomotives roster in HO scale

MR&T blue diesel locomotives: Photo of five HO scale diesel locomotives on white background

MR&T blue diesel locomotives MR&T blue diesel locomotives: The Milwaukee, Racine & Troy, Model Railroader’s HO scale staff layout, has been around for more than 45 years. Similar to many full-size railroads, the freelanced MR&T changed paint schemes on its diesel locomotives over the years. The railroad’s first paint scheme, Amtrak Blue, was used from […]

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Kansas City Southern 2-10-4

Kansas city Souther last steam locomotive

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 […]

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Fuel train on the Tonopah & Goldfield

Tonopah and Goldfield Railroad

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 […]

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Flexi-Vans on the IC

Illinois Central Railroad Flexi-Van flat cars

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 […]

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Switching scrap metal, stopping for coal, heading into a tunnel, and more Trackside Photos

A steam engine switches a gondola of baled scrap metal next to an old-fashioned downtown scene

Send us your Trackside Photos Trackside Photos is a showcase for the work of Model Railroader readers. Send your photos (digital images 5 megapixels or larger) to: Model Railroader, Trackside Photos, P.O. Box 1612, Waukesha, WI 53187-1612; or upload them to fileupload.kalmbach.com/contribute. For our photo submission guidelines, contact senior associate editor Steven Otte at sotte@kalmbach.com. […]

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Early Pennsy piggyback

Pennsylvania Railroad Keystone Merchandise Service

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 […]

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Doubleheaded Pennsy 2-10-4s

Pennsylvania Railroad coal train

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 […]

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CB&Q and PRR diesels in Chicago

Burlington Route Railway Express terminal

A Burlington Route switcher prepares to move several baggage-express cars at the Railway Express terminal near Chicago’s Union Station in 1961. In the foreground, a Pennsy switcher moves motive power — two E8As and an E7B — for a train into position at the station. J. David Ingles photo […]

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