Luxury trains in Mexico and South Africa

Coupled to the front of the Pretoria-Cape Town Trans Karoo are three Premier Classe cars – a new service providing comfortable accommodations at a reasonable price. The Trans Karoo is seen pulling into Hermon. Karl Zimmermann Luxurious cruise trains often turn up on public television specials, as do trips to such remote places as Mexico’s […]

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Riding Maine’s Downeaster

Twenty minutes out of Portland, Downeaster train 682 crosses Scarborough Marsh. Bob Johnston The return of passenger rail service to Maine was a story 13 years in the making, as Bob Johnston explained in the June 2002 issue of TRAINS Magazine. The passenger corridor, which launched in December 2001, could be a model for future […]

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Exploring interurbans

Interurbans Interurbans were electric railroads running between cities, often of lighter construction than “steam” railroads. They had their own rights of way through the countryside but usually ran in streets when in town, often sharing tracks with city streetcars. Trains consisted of one (sometimes more) cars. Passengers were their primary focus, though some lines came […]

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Union Pacific Railroad

Wearing Union Pacific’s revived wing shield emblem, a trio of SD70M locomotives leads a trailer train eastbound through Creston, Ill. Howard Ande The largest U.S. railroad, Union Pacific Railroad operates a 32,000-mile network (27,000 route miles owned, 5,000 route miles on trackage rights) serving 23 states. The railroad links every major city in the west […]

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Amtrak trains on May 1, 1971

Note: Most trains grouped in pairs. Prior to November 14, 1971, Amtrak did not assign its own train numbers, instead using numbers assigned by the individual freight railroads operating its trains. 101, 104 – Metroliner – New York-Washington (Ex. Sun.)103, 100 – Metroliner – New York-Washington (Ex. Sat. and Sun.)105, 106 – Metroliner – New […]

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ACL No. 1 Falters

Many years ago, when the Atlantic Coast Line was almost all double track from Richmond to Jacksonville and the passenger-train speed limit was 100 mph, a calamity nearly occurred in an obscure south Georgia swamp. ACL’s raceway occasionally would narrow to single track when encountering a drawbridge over a river, or a wide marsh associated […]

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Some Water on the Cheap

Water was a problem for both the Clinchfield Railroad and for local residents at Elkhorn City, Ky. The town is in far eastern Kentucky, at the north end of the Clinchfield where it met the south end of Chesapeake & Ohio’s Big Sandy Division, forming a through route for merchandise as well as the region’s […]

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