Boxcars assigned to less-than-carload (LCL) service — including several Southern Pacific “Overnight” boxcars — are being loaded on parallel tracks at Pacific Electric’s 8th Street Freight Station in Los Angeles in the 1940s. PE was an SP subsidiary. Pacific Electric […]
A 70-car Denver & Rio Grande Western narrow-gauge freight train drops down famous Tanglefoot Curve, just east of Cumbres, Colo., in June 1960. Since 1960, Cumbres & Toltec tourist trains have plied this landmark. Robert F. Collins […]
Great Northern launched its Red River pocket streamliner between Grand Forks, N.Dak., and St. Paul in June 1950, part of the road’s big postwar push for passengers. The coach seats featured a wheat motif on their upholstery. Great Northern […]
Two GP38s and a GP40 lead a Baltimore & Ohio freight out of Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac’s Potomac Yard in Arlington, Va., in April 1971. The train will soon enter Washington, D.C., via the “Long Bridge” over the Potomac River. The catenary is for Penn Central freight trains, which also use “Pot Yard.” David Ingles […]
By the early 1960s, railroads began reclaiming auto traffic from highway trucks with long two- and three-level auto racks on flatcars. Here, new Thunderbirds and other Fords are loaded aboard a Western Pacific tri-level car built by ACF. American Car & Foundry […]
In the only known photo of legendary engineer John Luther “Casey” Jones at the throttle of a locomotive, Jones and fireman J. W. McKinnie are ready to take Illinois Central 2-8-0 638 out for a break-in run after a shopping at Water Valley in summer 1898. Less than two years later, Jones perished in a […]
The flood of Powder River Basin coal that became so important to successor Burlington Northern began modestly on NP, with a 1969 contract to move coal from Colstrip, Mont., to Cohasset, Minn. In July 1969, a Cohasset-bound train pauses in Mandan, N.D. Duane Durr collection […]
A Railway Express Agency truck, along with a cart with milk cans, transfers express into a messenger car, while in the background, mail bags are loaded and unloaded from an RPO car along the Monon in 1948. Photo by Linn Westcott […]
A Canadian Pacific FP7-F7B set picks its way out of Toronto with a 13-car unnamed train No. 11 for Sudbury, Ontario, in 1964. The 260-mile run took just shy of six hours and 50 minutes to complete. Photo by J. David Ingles […]
Sixty-odd years ago, I was a youth living in Palmyra, Wis., where my father, Ben Eller Sr., was the station agent for the Milwaukee Road. Palmyra, 42 miles west of Milwaukee, was on the Madison Division, the original line to the state capital via Milton and Janesville. When I was 12, I got braces on […]
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Join Trains editors on a short tour of the best parts of Rochelle, Ill., for rail fans — the places where train horns sound often. Rochelle is the crossroads of Union Pacific and BNSF Railway mainlines in the middle of Illinois, in the middle of the Midwest — ensuring dozens of a train a day […]
