GEORGETOWN, Texas — As if the mechanical problems Union Pacific 4-8-4 No. 844 suffered last week weren’t enough, the railroad’s steam program was further embarrassed Friday when a boxcar that carries supplies for steam locomotives was damaged in an accident on the Georgetown Railroad. The boxcar collided with a gondola, punching in the end of […]
Doing the hustle
Union Pacific No. 6945 hustles past the railroad park in Rochelle, Ill., with double-stacked K-Line containers from Global 3. Photo by Sean Valk […]
CN sunrise
Morning sunlight glints off a Canadian National freight train rolling across Broadway in Waukesha, Wis., in August 2011. The train left Chicago in the wee hours and is headed for western Canada. Photo by Matt Van Hattem […]
In a word: Wow!
On July 2, 1994, a Montana Rail Link local heads east at Manhattan, Mont., with an incredible SD9/SD9/SD9/SD9/GP9/GP35/GP9/GP9 lashup. Photo by Tom Danneman […]
Trains, April 2012
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An A-OK roster
Arkansas & Oklahoma B23-7 No. 4062 leads a train to interchange cars with Union Pacific in Oklahoma City. John Leopard Although General Electric B23-7s dominate the Arkansas & Oklahoma’s roster, the railroad does use a few Electro-Motive Division locomotives and has previously even rostered a couple of Alcos. With heritages ranging from Santa Fe to […]
Rolling by rocks
A southbound Canadian National freight rolls through a limestone quarry in Waukesha, Wis., in August 2011. Stone, sand, and gravel make up the largest source of originating traffic on Wisconsin railroads. Photo by Matt Van Hattem […]
Erie Lackawanna Dining Car Preservation Society moves diner to Scranton, uses credit card program to raise funds NEWSWIRE
DUNMORE, Pa. – The Erie Lackawanna Dining Car Preservation Society’s ex-Delaware, Lackawanna & Western diner 469 is on its way over Norfolk Southern and Delaware-Lackawanna from Collierville, Tenn. to Scranton, Penn. The Budd Co. built the car in 1949 for the DL&W’s premier train, the Phoebe Snow. Renumbered 769 after the merger forming the Erie […]
Auto plants of North America, 2002
In the early 2000s, North America’s 88 automobile assembly plants produced about 15 million new cars and trucks a year. And railroads moved 70 percent of the vehicles built in the United States alone. Most Canadian and U.S. plants are concentrated in a wide corridor stretching from Toronto to Mobile, Ala. Plants in Mexico are […]
Coal plants of the Northeast and Great Lakes, 2002
Coal is the most important rail commodity in the United States. In the early 2000s, when this map was produced, coal accounted for one of four cars loaded and slightly more than 20 percent of rail revenue. Eighty percent of the coal goes to the generation of electricity at steam power plants, so a map […]
CSX Transportation’s predecessors
Geographic growth by acquisition or merger, and the elimination of redundant routes by sale or abandonment, are two factors that have been with American railroading from the outset…and are not about to go away. Consider this map of CSX Transportation’s principal ancestors. Shown here are 22 former Class I railroads — in post-World War II […]
Grade profiles of the Pocahontas coal roads
Compared here are the main lines of railroads that, for most of the 20th century, fed the nation with its most important natural resource: bituminous coal mined in Appalachia — the critical ingredient in power plants, steel mills, home furnaces, and factories. In 1927, the year of our comparison, the Chesapeake & Ohio and Norfolk […]
