If you want to know railroads, you’ve got to know Chicago. And Trains Magazine takes you there in its July 2003 Special Issue. You’ll see how 500 freight trains a day thread their way through the city, check in at the 30 active interlocking towers, pay homage to the city’s six great passenger stations, and […]
Penn Central Company Penn Central was created February 1, 1968 by merger of Pennsylvania and New York Central. Entered bankruptcy on June 21, 1970. Because of PC’s failure and its size, the federal government created Conrail, to which PC was conveyed on April 1, 1976. Pennsylvania Railroad Pennsylvania Railroad chartered April 13, 1846; by 1852, […]
Canadian National Canadian National Railways was incorporated June 6, 1919, to operate several carriers that had come under governmental control owing to financial problems: Intercolonial (1913); National Transcontinental (1915); Canadian Northern (1918); Grand Trunk Pacific (1920); and Grand Trunk (1920). The Grand Trunk name survived on the U.S. portion of the Montreal-Portland (Maine) line until […]
Union Pacific Railroad Union Pacific has the right name-it’s the last major U.S. rail system whose name has never changed, dating from its charter in 1862 to build the nation’s first transcontinental westward from Omaha, Nebraska. Construction began in 1865, and was completed on May 10, 1869. Also notable for their longevity are Union Pacific’s […]
A westbound BNSF freight train rounds the Tehachapi Loop in Southern California. Howard Ande The product of the Sept. 22, 1995 merger of the parent companies of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway and the Burlington Northern Railroad, BNSF is one of the west’s two giant railroad systems. Its 32,000-mile network (24,000 owned route […]
A westbound Canadian Pacific freight curves along the Mississippi River at Maple Springs, Minn. Matt Van Hattem The Canadian Pacific Railway operates a network of 13,600 route miles that stretches across Canada from Montreal to Vancouver, with lines reaching south into Chicago and the major population centers of the northeast U.S. In between its lines […]
Wearing Union Pacific’s revived wing shield emblem, a trio of SD70M locomotives leads a trailer train eastbound through Creston, Ill. Howard Ande The largest U.S. railroad, Union Pacific Railroad operates a 32,000-mile network (27,000 route miles owned, 5,000 route miles on trackage rights) serving 23 states. The railroad links every major city in the west […]
Caboose For more than a century, the caboose was a fixture at the end of every freight train in America. Like the red schoolhouse and the red barn, the red caboose became an American icon. Along with its vanished cousin the steam locomotive, the caboose evokes memories of the golden age of railroading. There are […]
Broadway Limited HO EMD SD40-2 diesel This good-looking EMD SD40-2 is Broadway Limited Imports’ first modern HO diesel locomotive. It’s a ready-to-run model that produces plenty of realistic sound during operation thanks to a factory-installed QSI Quantum sound system and automatic dual-mode decoder. The SD40-2 operates smoothly on layouts using either DC or Digital Command […]
In 1879 and 1880, a syndicate headed by George I. Seney, a New York banker, assembled the Lake Erie & Western Railway, a line from Fremont, Ohio, to Bloomington, Ill. After a dispute with the New York Central System about the routing of freight, Seney decided to build a line to connect the LE&W to […]
In the Fall 2001 issue of Classic Trains magazine, Senior Editor Dave Ingles recounts his train trip to and from Denver in May 1967. His detailed notes of train consists and time-keeping of arrivals and departures are presented here. May 11, 1967 IC #21, Green Diamond, Springfield, Ill.-St. LouisIC 4023 E8AIC 4109 E9B CofG 812 […]
It’s June 1971, and Amtrak is one month old, but the Chicago-Los Angeles Super Chief looks almost the same as it did under Santa Fe Railway auspices. A Fairbanks-Morse H-12-44 shoves the streamliner from the coach yard to a departure platform at Chicago Union Station. Note the Sears Tower under construction in the background. Doug […]
