“Check out the new Diesel!”

Seaboard Airline Railroad

People line up to tour the cab of brand-new Seaboard Air Line E4 passenger diesel No. 3001 in 1938. SAL’s 14 A units and 5 B units were the only Electro-Motive units to carry the E4 model designation. Louis A. Marre coll. […]

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Watering hogs on the UP

Union Pacific Railroad California Livestock Special

A triple-headed shower wets down the hogs riding in Union Pacific triple-deck cars at Dry Lake, Nev., on a hot July day in 1977. The train is the California Livestock Special, bound for Los Angeles. Steve Patterson photo […]

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Texas on a turntable

Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad Burlington Route

At the Burlington Route’s Centralia, Ill., engine terminal in September 1954, a hostler rides the turntable with 2-10-4 6313 as sister 6311 and a Mikado stand in the distance. Philip R. Hastings photo […]

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Zephyr passenger cars last trip — a 2017 journey

View of river at sunset through a passenger car window.

Zephyr passenger cars last trip — Looking beyond a sea of Amtrak Phase IV, the stainless-steel design and neon lights spell out California Zephyr on the tail end of Amtrak’s westbound No. 5 of the same name at Chicago Union Station. It’s a scene reminiscent of the 1950s with the same equipment that carried the […]

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Santa Fe’s Chicago coach yard

Santa Fe Railway sleeper cars

Santa Fe 2401, a 1937 Electro-Motive model NW, switches heavyweight tourist sleepers in the road’s coach yard in Chicago. Special signs on their sides indicate the cars are assigned to the Chicago–Los Angeles Scout, which ceased to operate as a Chicago train in 1949. Classic Trains coll. […]

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Bad Day at Black Rock filming location

Bad Day at Black Rock filming location: Man in dark colored suit stands on a railroad track in the desert.

Bad Day at Black Rock filming location: “Bad Day at Black Rock” sounds like the perfect name for a western, but really, it’s a taut present day crime drama that explodes onto the screen when one-armed John McCreedy steps off the train just after the opening credits. And what a backdrop for the credits; a […]

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Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad freight trains remembered

Streamline diesel locomotives with freight train among green grass and trees

Classic Trains editors are celebrating the history and heritage of Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad all through March 2022. Please enjoy this photo gallery of Lackawanna freight trains selected from the archives of Kalmbach Media’s David P. Morgan Library. The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western’s main line extended from Hoboken, N. J., northwest through Scranton, Pa., […]

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Diesels That Didn’t – Alco Black Marias

Streamlined diesel locomotive set in front of sanding tower

The Alco Black Marias, a trio of prototype cab units, were the builder’s initial attempt to enter the mainline diesel locomotive market after World War II. The U.S.’s World War II War Production Board closely monitored the railroad locomotive builders and what they could and could not produce. Loosely, EMD was manufacturing mostly road locomotives […]

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