Chicago Great Western Railway freight trains

Red diesel locomotives lead freight train on straight track

Classic Trains editors are celebrating the history and heritage of the Chicago Great Western Railway all through December 2021. Please enjoy this photo gallery selected from the archives of Kalmbach Media’s David P. Morgan Library. The Chicago Great Western was an agriculturally oriented Granger road linking Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, and St. Paul. Those cities, […]

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Chicago’s old Monroe Street Union Station

20180102

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 […]

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New Sherman Hill line conquers gravity for Union Pacific

The new Sherman Hill line in 1953 was Union Pacific’s latest improvement over the massive undertaking of building and maintaining a transcontinental railroad begun about 90 years earlier. Since the first surveyors ventured into the uplands west of Cheyenne in 1865, the Union Pacific has been waging intermittent war against the geography of southeastern Wyoming. […]

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Chicago Great Western passenger trains

A distant black and white photo of a train passing by

  All through December 2021, Classic Trains is celebrating the Chicago Great Western Railway. Please enjoy this image gallery of CGW passenger trains selected from Kalmbach Media’s David P. Morgan Library and first published in December 2016. Only from Trains.com! […]

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Gas-turbine demonstrator

20180126

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 […]

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Early Conrail at Conway Yard

20180122

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 […]

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Ma & Pa 0-6-0

20180116

Maryland & Pennsylvania 0-6-0 No. 6 gets a spin on the turntable at the beloved little road’s Baltimore roundhouse in March 1955. H. N. Proctor photo […]

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Mikado on an M&E train

20180111

In December 1949, a Burlington Route mail-and-express train rolls west near Keenesburg, Colo., with an express boxcar (a rebuilt troop kitchen car), Railway Post Office, two baggage express cars, another RPO, and a single rider coach for the crew. Mikado 5075 provides the motive power. Joe Schick, Jim Seacrest collection […]

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Chicago Great Western Railroad history

Steam locomotive with freight train in urban setting

Chicago Great Western Railroad history introduction Chicago Great Western Railroad history traces its roots to A.B. Stickney, who early in his adult life entered the railroad business, set to link St. Paul with Chicago. He took the legal assets of the moribund Minnesota & Northwestern Railroad, and in 1884 pushed a line under that banner […]

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Preparing a K4

20180124

At the Pennsylvania’s South Amboy, N.J., engine terminal in the mid-1950s, a hostler shovels coal into the firebox of a K4s Pacific in preparation for its next run. Don Wood photo […]

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