Not what it seems

Diesel locomotives push behind a caboose on a freight train by a signal

Not what it seems A Clinchfield “Shifter South” crawls out of Elkhorn City yard away from the camera and across Pool Point at the north end of the Breaks of the Big Sandy in 1964. The three-unit pusher will stay with the train to Towers, Va., where the grade begins to ease. Ron Flanary photo […]

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West Point Route

Steam-powered heavyweight passenger train on curve

West Point Route Atlanta & West Point and Western Railway of Alabama — together known as the West Point Route — handle the Southern Crescent between Atlanta and Montgomery. On February 28, 1948, WofA 4-8-2 No. 185 heads a 13-car train 38 east at Hogansville, Ga. David W. Salter photo […]

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Menards Santa Fe O gauge locomotive

Menards O gauge Santa Fe F3 model ¾ view top and side

Menards Santa Fe O gauge locomotive program is underway. Asking some 200 people to take a chance on this new product is bold. To request they test it on their layouts and report what the maker got right — and more importantly, wrong — takes even more guts. It is something I’ve never heard of […]

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Meet the Modeler: John Hudak

Photo of Joh Hudak’s layout with car parked very close to it

What was your first train set (or locomotive)?  My first train set was the Lionel 1434W Burlington GP diesel with three passenger cars from 1955 or 1956. Being a passenger set, it had limited play value for me. I also had a no. 52 fire car. My trains are primarily from this era (i.e. prewar, […]

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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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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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Man at work

Man sits in front of dispatchers’ panel making notation on paper

Man at work Baltimore & Ohio Dispatcher Carl Donald makes an entry on his trainsheet in DR Tower in Deshler, Ohio, in the early 1950s. Deshler lies at the crossing of the B&O’s Pittsburgh to Chicago and Toledo to Cincinnati main lines. Wallace W. Abbey photo […]

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Getting grain to market

Men work to unload a truck of wheat for reloading into railcar

Getting grain to market A truck dumps its load of wheat through the floor grate into the bin at an elevator in Fowlerville, Mich., in 1950. The framework in the background is for elevating wagons and trucks that don’t dump on their own. The town is located on the Chesapeake & Ohio’s Pere Marquette main […]

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