Norfolk & Western’s Clinch Valley Line by Ed Wolfe, Charles Wilson, Jr., and Paul Mandelkern HEW Enterprises, 116 Oakview Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 1521; 432 pages, 384 b/w and 48 color photos; hardcover, 8.5 x 11 in.; $65.00 Ed Wolfe has established himself as an outstanding researcher and writer in Appalachian railroad history with five different […]
Train Topic: Fallen Flags
The electric social train
The “Crandic” interurban was a safe way for University of Iowa students to travel to and from parties at Cou Falls, 15 miles north of Iowa City. Crandic car 120 is near the Cou Falls station shelter in May 1944. Classic Trains coll. The Cedar Rapids & Iowa City Railway, universally known by the abbreviation […]
Roselle to Jersey City: A farewell
CNJ GP7 1524 brings a Jersey City-bound commuter train into Roselle station on April 27, 1967, not long before the Aldene Plan diverted such trains to Newark’s Penn Station. John A. Yohannan A major change was about to take place in 1967 on the Jersey Central passenger service to Jersey City, N.J. From its humble beginnings […]
Fall vision
Oct. 7, 1997, was a perfect day to witness Conrail’s Office Car Special rolling east through the Berkshires on the Boston & Albany line at Bancroft, Mass. Photo by Robert Jordan […]
History According to Hediger: An engine ride on the Cannonball
Having trouble viewing this video? Please visit our Video FAQ page When Jim Hediger was a youngster, he wrote the president of the Wabash RR to see if he could ride in the cab of the locomotive on a trip to St. Louis. Much to everyone’s surprise, Jim got a letter and an invitation […]
History According to Hediger: An engine ride on the Cannonball
Having trouble viewing this video? Please visit our Video FAQ page When Jim Hediger was a youngster, he wrote the president of the Wabash RR to see if he could ride in the cab of the locomotive on a trip to St. Louis. Much to everyone’s surprise, Jim got a letter and an invitation […]
F3 to Monon
Red and gray Monon F3’s on the Louisville–Chicago Tippecanoe pause at Crawfordsville, Ind., in fall 1948. Dick Howell Back in the 1950s, when I was working for Kalmbach Publishing Co. but before I moved my family to be with me in Milwaukee, the Monon Route played an important role in getting me to and from Indianapolis […]
Inside Nickel Plate’s Conneaut roundhouse
In the Nickel Plate Road’s roundhouse at Conneaut, Ohio — one of the last citadels of high-speed steam freight locomotives — Berkshire 731 and another engine rest on March 16, 1957. Classic Trains coll. […]
An underrated diesel
Once a proud hauler of crack passenger trains and fast freights as a DL109 diesel locomotive, New Haven test vehicle PP 716 languishes in Boston in 1968, awaiting its fate: the scrapper’s torch. Bruce Beardsley If Alco’s famous PA diesel is perhaps a bit overrated, as implied in the January 2004 issue of Trains magazine, then the […]
First train to Tower Grove usually wins
St. Louis, late 1940s: After a “race” that was not as close as the one author John Mills saw in 1941, MP 4-6-2 5327 rolls the Missourian past a Terminal Railroad Association Baldwin diesel as Frisco 4-8-2 4401 backs the Will Rogers into Union Station. Harold E. Williams What could be more exciting to an 11-year-old […]
Green beans and trains
Erie Pacific 2707, a sister to the engine that enthralled author Noble during Ohio summers, is seen at Dunkirk, N.Y., 200 miles and two seasons away, but coincidently also alongside an NYC line. Al Rung My dad, after changing jobs following World War II, from Crosley Corp., in Cincinnati to one at Wright-Patterson Air Force […]
‘Happy 10th birthday, David Watson!’
A trio of new Seaboard E4 diesels, perhaps the very ones “David Watson” saw in Florida three months earlier, shows off the citrus-hued Orange Blossom Special livery in March 1939. Hugh M. Comer, David W. Salter coll. To be addressed by my first and middle names by my parents meant one of two things. Either […]
