W. A. Eby, PRR engineman and foster dad

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Like many old steam men, PRR engineman W. A. Eby disliked diesels, but he manages a smile in the cab of S12 No. 8734 working the Bellefonte local in 1957. Michael Hauk collection I never knew Walter A. Eby, my dad’s foster father. He passed away in 1963, when I was two years old. I […]

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Chariots of fire on the Erie

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A hot-metal “bottle car,” one of three in an Erie train that included eight hopper cars as spacers, passes DeForest Junction, between Youngstown and Warren, Ohio, in 1966. Clifford A. Redanz One of the more interesting aspects of steel-mill railroading were the “hot-metal runs” that moved molten iron from the blast furnaces to the open […]

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Close encounters of the 4-6-4 kind

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Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo’s two ex-NYC J-1e’s were among the Hudsons that captivated a Buffalo boy in the late 1940s. Frank Clodfelter While growing up in Cleveland and Buffalo after World War II, a close encounter with a Hudson-type locomotive was just a train ride away. My first memory was as a four-year-old. My family […]

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Burlington ‘Zephyr’ record

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The Burlington ‘Zephyr’ as seen in Aurora, Ill., on May 26, 1934. Its nonstop run may have included slow spots. CB&Q Q In 1934, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy ran the Zephyr from Denver to Chicago nonstop. How did they do this without changing crews? Did they have crews on-board for each subdivision and change […]

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Whose cab ride is this?

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Erie RS2 904 clatters into the Lackawanna’s Hoboken Terminal with a Main Line local in 1956. Richard H. Young Youth is wasted on young people, so the saying goes. Kids don’t have the … well … maturity to know what’s special in their world. Watch the crowds at Disneyland. It’s the adults who are agog […]

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PRR doodlebugs

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Three Pennsylvania Railroad self-propelled motor cars (“doodlebugs”) layover near Penn Station, Baltimore, in May 1955. The cars worked commuter runs on the old Northern Central to New Freedom, Pa. Classic Trains coll. […]

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Pennsylvania Railroad Geeps on the Mountain

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A set of Pennsylvania Railroad GP9s climbs the east slope of Allegheny Mountain with piggyback train TT1 in September 1956. Trains magazine Editor David P. Morgan, researching a story on PRR’s Altoona–Pittsburgh operations, rides the cab of the second unit. Philip R. Hastings photo […]

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