The trailing truck for Lima’s 1925 demonstrator locomotive No. 1, the first 2-8-4 Berkshire type, featured four wheels to support the engine’s large firebox — a major advance in steam design. The piping was for a booster engine which drove the truck’s rear axle. Photo by Lima Locomotive Works […]
One of the Interstate Railroad’s ten Alco RS3 diesel locomotives switches hopper cars in the road’s yard at Andover, Virginia, in May 1960. The 88-mile coal-hauler’s diesels wore a colorful gray-orange-silver scheme. The Southern Railway bought the Interstate in June 1961. Photo by Steve Patterson […]
Few Railway Post Office cars survived the big cuts of 1967. Among the handful that remained was the St. Paul & Aberdeen RPO on Milwaukee Road train 15, the truncated remnant of the Olympian Hiawatha, on which clerks are seen at work in the spring of 1968. Photo by Don L. Hofsommer […]
The Santa Fe’s Hi-Level coaches, introduced in 1956 on the Chicago–L.A. El Capitan, featured reclining leg-rest seats, air-powered sliding doors, and Southwest Indian imagery. […]
A GP35 and three GP30s lead a 47-car freight up the west side of Denver & Rio Grande Western’s Tennessee Pass at Mitchell, Colorado, in September 1969. Indicative of the severity of the grade, four F units and two older Geeps are cut in as mid-train helpers. […]
In October 1953, a blanket of fog lies over Sherbrooke, Quebec, as Quebec Central G2 4-6-2 2556 awaits departure time of train 1 for Quebec City as a G3 Pacific brings train 39 into the station. Photo by Philip R. Hastings […]
In 1968, the Great Northern loaded 50 of its new Big Sky blue covered hoppers in Wolf Point, Montana, in an experimental unit train move to an export elevator in Portland, Oregon. In this posed photo, a crewman signals from the train’s modern wide-vision caboose. Photo by Great Northern […]
Chesapeake & Ohio 2-6-6-2 Mallets 1309 and 1302 are departing Scarlet, West Virginia, in June 1950 with a loaded coal train. The 10 members of C&O’s H-6 class were the last steam locomotives built for domestic use by Baldwin Locomotive Works (1949). Engine 1309 is being restored for service on the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad […]
Railfans watch as a Western Maryland coal train swings around famous Helmstetter’s Curve on its descent eastward toward Cumberland, Md., in May 1952. Photo by Edward Theisinger […]
Chesapeake Western, a 54-mile T-shaped west central Virginia road, employed three 1946 Baldwin DS-4-4-660s, two of which drill cars at Harrisonburg, site of the Southern Railway interchange, on November 5, 1958. CW, under Norfolk & Western control after 1954, also reached C&O at Staunton. Bob Krone photo […]
Western Railway of Alabama 4-8-2 No. 186, was built for Florida East Coast in 1924, storms east out of Montgomery, Ala., with the Crescent Limited for Washington and New York in November 1941. Together the WRofA and Atlanta & West Point formed the West Point Route. Photo by A. C. Kalmbach […]
An article about the Pennsylvania Railroad’s new Keystone train in October 1956 Trains magazine (reprinted in 2015 in Classic Trains’ special edition More Trains of the 1950s) was titled “The Ankle-View Train” because of the unusual perspective the low-profile coaches afforded their riders when stopped at high-level platforms. This scene at Newark, N.J., explains all. Pennsylvania Railroad photo […]
