Company service

Electric locomotive pulls coal train on private railroad

Company service Texas Electric Utilities E25B No. 2304, southbound with coal for Monticello, Texas, in May 1984, represents the first generation of motive power on the power plant railroad. Alex Mayes photo […]

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Cody’s Trackside Finds: A layout-sized engine terminal

Metal enginehouse and sand tower with three BNSF Ry. road locomotives parked by building.

When you think of engine facilities on the BNSF Ry., images of large, multi-bay structures; wash racks; and sand towers and fuel columns that can handle 10 or more locomotives at a time probably come to mind. And that makes perfect senses considering the railroad’s size. BNSF has facilities like this in Alliance (Neb. and […]

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Overland Route

Steam locomotive smoking profusely with passenger cars in tow

Overland Route A trim Southern Pacific 4-6-2 makes better than 60 mph with Overland Limited east of Elko, Nev., in 1918, when Overland Route rail service was already nearly 50 years old, and the top trains were numbered 1 and 2. Fred Jukes photo […]

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‘Shasta Daylight’

Looking up at orange and red diesel locomotives on curved steel trestle

Shasta Daylight The Oakland-bound Shasta Daylight rumbles over the big, curved trestle at Redding, Calif., in mid-1950. The Shasta was diesel-powered from its July 1949 launch. James L. Martin photo […]

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Railroad man

Man in caboose cupola

Railroad man Gainesville Midland Railroad conductor L. C. Birchfield is perched in a caboose cupola in the late 1950s. The railroad ran between Gainesville and Athens in northern Georgia and one time had a branch to Monroe. Seaboard Air Line purchased the road in June 1959. Philip R. Hastings photo […]

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There’s a prototype for everything!

BNSF 6800, a General Electric ES44C4, hurrying westbound near Harrington, Wash. with an empty centerbeam flatcar

Want to model modern mainline action with one engine and two cars? Don’t worry – there’s a prototype for everything! On June 19th, 2021, Lindsay Korst photographed BNSF 6800, a General Electric ES44C4, hurrying westbound near Harrington, Wash. with an empty centerbeam flatcar (probably for added braking power) and a Boeing Aircraft parts car. How […]

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Rolling fortress

Rear of passenger train on curve

Rolling fortress With two big engines leading a dozen heavyweight cars into the desert, the Southern Pacific’s Sunset Limited looks like a rolling fortress at Palm Springs, Calif., sometime in the mid-1940s. Walter H. Thrall Jr. photo […]

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Keeping an even keel

A man shovels grain in a boxcar

Keeping an even keel It was important for boxcar loads of grain to be level. Sometimes workers had to enter the cars and level the loads by hand, as with this carload of wheat. Jeff Wilson collection […]

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