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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 […]
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 […]
Mind-blowing dining car facts Dining by rail was transformed from a disgusting experience to a culinary calling card pitting one railroad against another to garner passengers. At the table, passengers enjoyed fine food served with the grace and style of the best restaurants. What we didn’t see was the world and culture of the dining […]
Think of the GMD-1 as the Canadian prairie locomotive. With a legacy stretching six decades the EMD GMD-1 (General Motors Diesel of Canada) was a locomotive model that was used exclusively in Canada by the Canadian National and the Northern Alberta Railways. Build at the General Motors Diesel plant in London, Ontario, the 1,200-horsepower diesel […]
Servicemen enjoy a meal on one of Baltimore & Ohio’s elegant colonial-themed dining cars during World War II. B&O photo […]
What was your first byline in Trains? Bob Johnston: “All passengers will make their connections” appeared in “Selected Railroad Reading” in the April 1989 issue. That article really began two years earlier, when an employee on the Chicago TV advertising sales team I managed gave me a notebook prior to a trip I took to […]
Starting its nearly half century of service, EMD GP15-1 locomotives are still going strong on regional short lines around the country as proof that old EMDs can still pull todays manifest traffic. Built by General Motors’ Electro-Motive Division between 1976 and 1982, the four-axle GP15-1 was a way for railroads to purchase new power instead […]
Electro-Motive Division tunnel motor diesels Electro-Motive Division tunnel motor diesels solved a tricky problem. Locomotives operate in all climates, from scorching desert heat to frigid Canadian winters. An ample supply of fresh air is always required for cooling and combustion purposes but when trains operate through long tunnels or snowsheds at slow speeds, the ability […]
Infrared photography Photography is a wonderful way to document your life. Whether you take pictures of your family, animals, landscapes, or trains, after a while the “seeing it like it is” or untouched photo can leave something to be desired. It may even eventually make you put the camera down. I was in such a […]
Similar to the EMD RS1325, the Alco S5 locomotive is one of those locomotive designs that seemed like a good idea at the time, was engineered well, ran well, but almost no one wanted to purchase. The manufacturer needed to update its aging lineup of 660-hp S3 and 1,000-hp S4 end cab switchers […]
The best-selling first-generation Electro-Motive diesel locomotives came from the switcher, cab unit, and road switcher product lines. The company that would dominate locomotive construction from the 1940s through the 1970s had humble beginnings, contracting the construction of motor cars at other companies’ plants in the 1920s. The Electro-Motive Corp. was purchased by General Motors in […]
Missouri-Kansas-Texas logo underwent subtle changes throughout the railroad’s history. But its origin is more interesting than these iterative changes. In his history of the Katy, J. Parker Lamb mentions the different incarnations of Katy’s corporate herald over the years, but where did the road’s uniquely shaped emblem come from? According to Freeman Hubbard in his […]
