Clinchfield 4-6-6-4 pusher

20180108

Clinchfield Railroad 4-6-6-4 No. 672 lends a hand at the rear of a southbound coal train at Gray, Tenn., on May 28, 1952, not long before the road became 100 percent diesel. The road engine was another Challenger, No. 662. Ed Theisinger photo […]

Read More…

News Wire Top 10, No. 4: East Broad Top’s revival continues

Steam locomotive on turntable

ROCKHILL FURNACE, Pa. — The narrow gauge East Broad Top Railroad plans to celebrate 2022 as another milestone – the 150th anniversary of the start of construction in 1872 — with more track restoration and a return to steam-locomotive operation. If 2020 was the year of a miraculous rebirth for the historic south-central Pennsylvania line, […]

Read More…

Chicago Great Western Railway locomotives

Red and black diesel locomotives parked on curve

All through December, Classic Trains editors are celebrating the Midwest’s Chicago Great Western Railway. Please enjoy this photo gallery of CGW freight trains selected from the image archives of Kalmbach Media’s David P. Morgan Library. The CGW was considered one of the Granger railroads of the Midwest linking Chicago, St. Paul, and Kansas City. It […]

Read More…

Biggest in Canada

20180109

Canadian Pacific 2-10-4 5919 simmers at Field, B.C., before heading east into Kicking Horse Pass with a train. CP’s 2-10-4s were the biggest locomotives in Canada. Albert M. Rich coll. […]

Read More…

Future of 2-4-0 displayed in Georgia in limbo

Small steam locomotive in park

McDONOUGH, Ga. – The future of a 1934 H.K. Porter 2-4-0 steam locomotive on display at a local park 30 miles south of Atlanta is up in the air, according to its owners, the elected Board of Commissioners of Georgia’s Henry County. Wearing No. 7, the engine, acquired in 2003, has been displayed at the […]

Read More…

Meet the Modeler: Peter Atonna

A scene on Peter Atonna’s layout

    Hi-rail O gauge modeler Peter Atonna’s work last graced the cover of Classic Toy Trains in October 2017, but his relationship with the magazine goes back at least two layouts to the May 1997 issue. His current one, the detail-packed Seligman & Paulden Lines, showcases the best of long passenger and freight trains […]

Read More…

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. […]

Read More…

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 […]

Read More…

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 […]

Read More…