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Mini-mills provided half of U.S. and Canadian steel-making capacity in 2001. Their decentralized geographic distribution mirrored U.S. population density (with the notable exception of California), and did not work to the benefit of railroads. The remaining integrated mills primarily sold high-quality sheet steel to auto and appliance factories. Railroads included in this map: BNSF Railway; […]
Two Kansas City Southern “Southern Belles” cross the Kankakee River at Momence, Ill., on a southbound Union Pacific container train on July 16, 2011. The route between Chicago and Woodland Junction, Ill., is jointly operated by CSX and UP. Photo by Brian M. Schmidt […]
Railroad names: Georgia Railroad, Great Northern, Gulf, Mobile & Ohio, Illinois Central, Kansas City Southern, Lehigh Valley, Louisville & Nashville, Maine Central, Milwaukee Road, Missouri Pacific, Missouri-Kansas-Texas, Monon, Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis, New Haven, New York Central, New York, Ontario & Western, Nickel Plate, Norfolk & Western, Northern Pacific, Pennsylvania, Reading, Rock Island, Rutland, […]
50-foot ACF boxcar by Atlas O Price: $52.95 Manufacturer: Atlas O 378 Florence Ave. Hillside, NJ 07205 www.atlaso.com Road names: Pan Am (Maine Central), Clarendon & Pittsford, Family Lines (Atlanta & West Point), Kansas City Southern, Missouri Pacific, National Ry. of Mexico, and Railbox. Undecorated version is also available. Era: 1974 to present As part […]
HO scale locomotives Electro-Motive Division F7 diesel locomotive. New paint scheme: Great Northern (Big Sky Blue). Five-pole skew-wound motor with flywheels, prototype-specific details, and McHenry knuckle couplers. A unit only (freight): Direct-current model, $169.98; with SoundTraxx Digital Command Control sound decoder, $269.98. A-B set (freight or passenger): DC model, $309.98; with SoundTraxx DCC sound decoder, […]
Read more about Kansas City Southern’s pro-passenger policy in a PDF of Lou Marre’s article “We Have No Intention of Going Out of the Passenger Business” published in the November 1967 issue of Trains magazine. KCS passenger policy DOWNLOAD […]
In the early 2000s, North America’s 88 automobile assembly plants produced about 15 million new cars and trucks a year. And railroads moved 70 percent of the vehicles built in the United States alone. Most Canadian and U.S. plants are concentrated in a wide corridor stretching from Toronto to Mobile, Ala. Plants in Mexico are […]
Coal is the most important rail commodity in the United States. In the early 2000s, when this map was produced, coal accounted for one of four cars loaded and slightly more than 20 percent of rail revenue. Eighty percent of the coal goes to the generation of electricity at steam power plants, so a map […]
This Map of the Month was featured in the March 2007 issue of Trains magazine. Imagine if you were to go back in time and tell Cornelius Vanderbilt that the giant railroad system he had methodically assembled — the powerful New York Central — would one day be carved up by two coal roads from […]
This Map of the Month was featured in the June 2003 issue of Trains magazine. We know railroads experienced a lot of traffic growth since they were deregulated in 1980, but where? And more importantly, which lines did better or worse than average? This map of western main lines compares the growth rate in tonnage […]
A pair of CSX trains, with Union Pacific; Dakota, Minnesota & Eastern; and Kansas City Southern locomotives; wait for new crews in Willard, Ohio’s train yard. Photo by Brandon Townley […]
Kansas City Southern’s crack passenger train, the “Southern Belle,” ran head on into a standing freight train at Baton Rouge, La., on Dec. 8, 1967. A northbound freight with three GP30s was set to hold the main, and await the passenger train, which would take the siding. The front end brakeman on the freight was […]
