West Point Route passenger trains: All through October 2024, Classic Trains editors are celebrating the history and heritage of the West Point Route: Atlanta & West Point and Western Railway of Alabama. Please enjoy this photo gallery of West Point Route passenger trains, originally published online in 2017. […]
Colorado & Southern 2-8-0 No. 73 follows 3-foot-gauge tracks toward the summit of Kenosha Pass, high above the canyon near Webster, Colo., on July 14, 1938. Soon these tracks of the South Park Line will be abandoned. R.H. Kindig photo […]
PLEASANT LAKE, Ind. — The Indiana Rail Experience operated its second cigar train using Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society passenger cars on Saturday, Oct. 12, 2024, on host railroad Indiana Northeastern. The “Rocky Patel Rolling Smoke Cigar Train” train operated behind Nickel Plate Road SD9 No. 358 in pull-pull fashion from Pleasant Lake to Hillsdale, […]
Three Lehigh Valley Alco C420s fly the company flag at Treichler, Pa., in May 1974. The units were delivered in the mid-1960s in gray and yellow. Mike Bednar photo […]
The steam community is in a happy state of shock this week with the news that New York Central 3001, one of the NYC’s famed 4-8-2 Mohawk engines, might be restored to operating condition by the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society, operators of famed Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 No. 765. The announcement came Oct. 9 […]
To win over the railroads with its new Rail Diesel Car (RDC), the Budd Co. wasn’t content with a single model type. In a time of declining passenger traffic during the post war years, the car manufacturer banked on multiple to meet the needs of either passenger, baggage-express or mail, as well as for all […]
First the tracks were built east. Then west. Then west some more. Such were the uncertain beginnings of what became the West Point Route. Construction began on the banks of the navigable Alabama River at Montgomery, the capital. During 1834-41, 32 miles of standard-gauge track extended east toward both West Point and Columbus, Ga., […]
Pennsylvania Railroad 2-10-4 No. 6456 is one of 125 such locomotives on the roster. The home-built engines were in the J1 and J1a classes, built between 1942 and 1944. The last was retired in 1959. Classic Trains collection […]
When it comes to showmanship in mainline mountain railroading, California’s Tehachapi Pass can be described as a grand theater. Located between Bakersfield and Mojave, historic Tehachapi Loop is at center stage, an impressive helix stretching three-quarters of a mile while looping over itself to gain 77 feet in elevation. The loop itself sits at about […]
DULUTH, Minn. – The Lake Superior Railroad Museum has restored a former Erie Mining hi-rail car — a 1957 Pontiac — to service. The Pontiac Chieftain station wagon was put into service in 1957 on Erie Mining Co.’s 74-mile main line between Hoyt Lakes and Taconite Harbor. The vehicle traveled an estimated 110,000 […]
Detroit once had a robust passenger-train network that included two commuter routes that survived into the early 1980s. But when public funding of those trains ended, so did the Detroit commuter trains. Grand Trunk Western began Detroit-Pontiac commuter service on Aug. 1, 1931. Steam locomotives pulled some of the three daily roundtrips until […]
The photo is at once ordinary and extraordinary. Ordinary because the photographer had to grab it on the fly, shooting a low-angle wedge shot in low light as a New York Central steam locomotive snuck up on him out of nowhere. The photo is a bit dark and shows little of its creator’s compositional genius. […]
