Some of Soo Line’s 50-foot, 70-ton boxcars were equipped with grain doors, visible in the upper part of the plug door. The railroad built 200 of the modern-looking cars in 1964. Photo by Soo Line […]
Modern grain movers
Section: Photos and Videos
Dispatcher’s delight
Missouri-Kansas-Texas 4-6-2 400 leaves Denison, Texas, with an extra in late 1948. Above the engine, awnings shade the windows of the dispatcher’s office, where the photographer then worked. One of 10 members of the Katy’s H-3-c class Pacifics, No. 400 was built in 1920 by Lima. Photo by Harold K. Vollrath […]
Fall in Wisconsin
A C&NW E8 leads the Chicago–Rapid City, S.Dak., Dakota 400 past the shimmering waters of Devil’s Lake on October 7, 1956. Today, Wisconsin & Southern freights pass through this scenic state park, located 3 miles south of Baraboo. Photo by William D. Middleton […]
Georgia sun
Southern Railway SD35 3055 and GP30 2585 have their high noses out in the Georgia sun at the end of their journey through Pegram Shop in Atlanta in March 1967. The railroad had 100 SD35s and 120 GP30s. Photo by Walter A. Appel […]
Shark nose style
Baldwin’s shark-nosed DR-4-4-15 demonstrator set appears in a 1949 photo. Typical of builders’ offerings of the time, it was constructed in an A-B-B-A set. Photo by Baldwin […]
Small town railroading
Santa Fe local 42, with 4-6-2 3445, rolls along Duarte Road in the community of Duarte, Calif., east of Los Angeles on January 1, 1952. The railroad had 50 locomotives in the class, Nos. 3400–3449, built by Baldwin in 1919–1924 and retired in the early 1950s. Photo by Stan Kistler […]
Diesels victorious
Two Pittsburgh & Western Virginia Fairbanks-Morse H20-44s lead 81-car train 92 into Louise, W.Va., in March 1950. P&WV completely dieselized its road trains with the Fairbanks-Morse units, sending all seven of its 2-6-6-4s to scrap. Photo by J.J. Young Jr. […]
Deco depot
In 1940 Union Pacific replaced its old Las Vegas depot with this one, designed in a variant of the Art Deco style known as Streamline Moderne. The railroad’s shield and “Route of the Streamliners and the Challengers” sign — both rendered in neon, of course — faced up casino-lined Fremont Street. In 1956, UP augmented […]
Sterling performers
Northwestern Steel & Wire, located in Sterling, Ill., beside Chicago & North Western’s east-west main line, cut up untold numbers of steam locomotives in the 1950s and early ’60s to provide raw material for its furnaces. Among the condemned engines entering the plant were 15 Grand Trunk Western 0-8-0s, which arrived in 1960. NS&W spared […]
Where there’s smoke
Where there’s smoke. . . there’s often an Alco. Delaware & Hudson PA’s 18 and 19 blast north out of Saratoga Springs, N.Y., with the Laurentian in June 1969. Doyle McCormack is restoring No. 18 (ex- Santa Fe 62L) as “Nickel Plate 190” in Oregon, while sister 16 has moved to the Museum of the American […]
Missabe 2-8-0 at work
Missabe 2-8-0 at work Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range 2-8-0 No. 1218 has hold of a side-door caboose as it switches cars around Oliver Iron Mining Co.’s plant at Rainy Junction, Minn., in September 1954. Philip R. Hastings photo […]
Steamy snow scene
A pair of Canadian Pacific 2-8-2s, Nos. 5410 and 5329, drift with their grain extra down into the Eaton River valley just west of Cookshire, Quebec, in the mid-1950s. Cookshire was home to one of five water tanks on the line east from Montreal into Maine, and most eastbound trains would stop there. Photo by […]
