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What was your first byline in Trains? Thomas Danneman: My first byline was in the March 2006 issue. I had photos published before then, including a few covers, but “New Muscle for Montana,” which was about Montana Rail Link’s new SD70ACe locomotives, included my first published words. What’s your favorite locomotive and why? Thomas Danneman: […]
Q: Why were billboard reefer cars outlawed? I recently received my copy of Gerry Leone’s Model Railroader’s Handbook. It is certainly a deep well of information. I came across the “Railroad regulatory timeline” on page 111. Most of the regulations banned older, unsafe technology (arch-bar trucks, truss-rod car construction, etc.) as newer technology developed. That makes sense. But […]
I’ve never been in the market for a private railroad car — editors and writers rarely ascend to that rarified air — but if I was, I’d compose an email this very moment and send it to the equipment broker Ozark Mountain Railcar, there to bid on what might be the ultimate PV: heavyweight sleeper-observation […]
I was promoted to conductor on May 19, 1981. This was rare at my age — I had just turned 21 at the end of 1980. In those days you had to have two years on the road as a brakeman to even qualify to get a promotion. The test I had to take had […]
It always bothered me that I couldn’t identify the engineer in this picture of Amtrak train No. 98, departing Main Street Station in Richmond, Va., on Sept. 14, 1974. He wasn’t the regular throttle jockey, whom I knew. Still, it’s one of my favorite images and was used to promote my first book, From the […]
Diesel locomotive builders 1. American Locomotive Company For many years after World War II, Alco — the American Locomotive Company — was the second place diesel builder in the United States. The company’s history as a steam locomotive manufacturer dates from 1901. The Schenectady, N.Y.,-based firm began producing its first diesels in conjunction with suppliers […]
Rotary snowplow Snow … There are few things that mother nature can throw at the unsuspecting railroader that can wreak such havoc on operations. Those pretty little white flakes can blanket a landscape under an impenetrable frozen glaze, jamming the network and shutting down the main line. Fortunately, there are some tools in the railroader’s […]
Shortline railroading For many independent shortline operators, staying fiscally sound today means disregarding so much of what was once a winning formula. You know, picking up freight cars at the interchange and delivering them to customers, then dropping off outbounds back at the end of the workday before heading to the barn. If all went […]
U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward must have thought he was making the real estate deal of a lifetime — 600,000 square miles for a cost of less than two cents an acre. That is the price Seward negotiated with Edouard de Stoecki, Russian minister to the U.S., for the purchase of what would […]
More than a few times, photographs in the Kalmbach library have sent me searching for railroads and places I’ve never encountered, and a few weeks ago some 8 x 10 prints lined up perfectly with travel plans. The destination: Mendocino, Calif., the charming old lumber town up the coast 155 miles from San Francisco. My […]
Norfolk & Western Business Car No. 300 It seems like my trip on the Super Dome was only the beginning of my private varnish journeys in 2023. A few months later I was asked if I wanted to take the Norfolk & Western Business Car No. 300 on a fall colors excursion train through northeast […]
Rolling stones Cresting Sand Patch while witnessing an Allegheny Summit sunrise on the former Baltimore & Ohio was one of the intangible benefits of being the engineer of Amtrak’s Capitol Limited between Washington and Pittsburgh in the late 1980s. Few things are as awe-inspiring, but Mother Nature can also be frighteningly treacherous. The right of […]
