Union Pacific’s 4-6-6-4 Challengers were too long for the turntable at North Platte, Nebr., but they could still use it. Wedges were clamped to the table’s rails at one end, then a 4-6-6-4 was backed on, leaving the rear four wheels of the tender hanging in mid-air. Art Stensvad photo […]
In a scene filled with the trappings of classic-era railroading, a Baltimore & Ohio 2-8-2 clatters across the New York Central at Shelby, Ohio, in September 1955. Today, both lines remain, but the NYC is single track and the depot buildings, water towers, sidetracks, interlocking rods, and express trucks are long gone. Philip R. Hastings […]
Clinchfield Railroad 4-6-6-4 No. 672 lends a hand at the rear of a southbound coal train at Gray, Tenn., on May 28, 1952, not long before the road became 100 percent diesel. The road engine was another Challenger, No. 662. Ed Theisinger photo […]
Industrial designer Brooks Stevens (center) and two associates pose with drawings of the Milwaukee Road’s new Olympian Hiawatha, launched in 1947. Classic Trains coll. […]
A Chicago, Burlington & Quincy switcher sets out a pair of empty stock cars for loading at a Wyoming stock pen in 1955. William A. Akin photo […]
The 3-foot-gauge Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn was built in 1875 and in 1928 electrified its double-track line along the shore north of Boston. The line included this swing bridge at Point of Pines. William Butler Jr. photo […]
Canadian Pacific 2-10-4 5919 simmers at Field, B.C., before heading east into Kicking Horse Pass with a train. CP’s 2-10-4s were the biggest locomotives in Canada. Albert M. Rich coll. […]
Locomotive 182 of the Waterloo, Cedar Falls & Northern leads a freight train across the Cedar River bridge south of Waterloo, Iowa, in the late 1940s or early ’50s. William D. Middleton photo […]
Before the current Chicago Union Station was opened in 1925, trains of the PRR, CB&Q, and Milwaukee Road used a terminal, Monroe Street Union Station, at roughly the same riverfront location. In this 1919 view, CB&Q Lounging Car No. 201 is on the rear of a Burlington train ready to depart south while Milwaukee 4-6-2 […]
Experimental gas-turbine-electric No. 101, built at General Electric’s Erie, Pa., plant in 1948, heads a dynamometer car and a freight at Blasdell, N.Y., during a test run on the Nickel Plate Road. Franklin E. Gnau photo […]
This view inside a hump control tower at Conway Yard, the giant former Pennsylvania Railroad facility on the north bank of the Ohio River west of Pittsburgh, dates from the early months of Conrail. Conrail photo […]
Three-decade-old Mikado 1540 stands with spanking new GP7 500 at Louisville & Nashville’s South Louisville Shops in 1951. Jack Fravert photo […]
