DETROIT – The news this week that the Ford Motor Co. has purchased Detroit’s crumbling but historic Michigan Central Station indicates a happy ending for one of America’s most notoriously neglected big-city train stations. Ford purchased the building from the Manuel Moroun family, billionaire owners of a trucking and logistics empire, which includes the Ambassador […]
Russell Tedder’s 16-hour 70-tonner ride occurred in July 1955, when he was dispatching for the Live Oak, Perry & Gulf and South Georgia, two affiliated short lines recently acquired by the Southern Railway. Watermelons were an important source of revenue for the Live Oak, Perry & Gulf and South Georgia in the early 1950s. The […]
See color film footage of Mobile & Gulf No. 97 at work from the Sunday River Productions program Steaming Through the Deep South. […]
See color film footage of Mobile & Gulf No. 97 at work from the Sunday River Productions program Steaming Through the Deep South. […]
Trains Magazine kicks off a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad with a special tour and two new bloggers. This replica of Central Pacific Jupiter is at the National Park Service site in Promontory, Utah. Trains: Jim Wrinn WAUKESHA, Wis. – On the 149th anniversary of the Golden Spike, Trains Magazine announces […]
New York Central S3 No. 9363 stands on the West Side line in Manhattan in 1967. Thirteen years earlier and 150 miles to the north, the road used another Alco switcher in a novel attempt to capture special-train business. Elliot Kahn, Louis A. Marre coll. In a lifetime of reading about railroading, I’ve seen the […]
ST. LOUIS – Gary Bensman walks through Continental Fabricators in St. Louis, holding a washout plug for the boiler of Pennsylvania Railroad T1 No. 5550. Bensman grips the plug much like a judge would hold a gavel, as he holds court over the fabrication of the boiler for a locomotive class whose last member of […]
Baldwin road-switcher 1615 passes the Hertford, N.C., depot with Norfolk Southern freight 88 in January 1965. A few months later, removal of a siding here would cause some confusion. Harry Bundy Telegraph operators working from the extra list rolled with the punches. They were on call 24/7, as they say now, to fill vacancies created […]
Billy Graham Milwaukee Journal; Trains archive WAUKESHA, Wis. — It is hard to imagine that a revival in Altoona, Pa., made the Rev. Billy Graham doubt his calling. Graham died this morning at his home in Montreat, N.C., at age 99. But the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that before the Southern Baptist preacher dazzled thousands in […]
Listen to GTW steam audio recordings from Art Weber’s album, Detroit Division, recorded in 1959, accompanied by photos of GTW steam in action. […]
This C&O 2-6-6-6 strains mightily to get her 70 loads of eastbound coal moving at Thurmond, W. Va., in 1956. The Balky 1624 had slipped down, then cut off and run ahead to put down sand, and is now trying again. A full third of her tremendous engine weight rests on her lead and trailing […]
With clouds overhead mimicking steam, Big Boy No. 4004 sleeps in October 2013 at Cheyenne’s Holliday Park, just a few blocks from UP rails. Jim Wrinn No. 4004 • Holliday Park, Cheyenne, Wyo. BUILDER’S DATE: September 1941 SERIAL NUMBER: 69575 HISTORY: The fifth Big Boy constructed seems to have had an uneventful career. LIFETIME MILEAGE: […]
