Norfolk Southern heritage: then and now

FULL SCREEN Top, photo courtesy of Norfolk Southern Corp.; bottom, Robert Palmer photo Top: The first NS heritage unit, ES44AC No. 8098, poses in Conrail blue at Altoona Shops on March 15, 2012. Bottom: Conrail SD60 6702, GP40-2 3220, and an unidentified GE lead a Philadelphia-to-Bethlehem iron ore train out of Black Rock Tunnel near […]

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Running through!

An eastbound run through train between the Southern Pacific and Seaboard Coast Line between Houston, Texas, and Jacksonville, Fla., rumbles through Orange, Texas, behind a trio of SCL units, two U30Bs and a GP30. The date is May 1972. Photo by J. Parker Lamb Jr. […]

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Northern Japan’s railroads

FULL SCREEN Photograph by Scott Lothes The most luxurious train in Japan, the overnight Cassiopeia from Sapporo to Tokyo, rolls along Volcano Bay behind two specially painted DD51 locomotives just before sunset on June 18, 2007. FULL SCREEN Photograph by Scott Lothes Like locomotive engineers across generations and oceans, the driver of JR Hokkaido’s Hamanasu […]

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Union Pacific Railroad Construction Photos

FULL SCREEN UP photo Casement Brothers construction train used during the building of the Union Pacific Railroad. Three 4-4-0s were the power this day. FULL SCREEN UP photo Casement Brothers camp train during the construction of the UP. Note the barely finished cottonwood logs stacked as ties to the left and the scant ballast, probably […]

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The Russian rolls

Gainesville Midland Russian Decapod No. 206 rolls near Candler, Ga., on March 25, 1955, with a freight from the Seaboard Air Line connection at Athens. The engine was once Seaboard Air Line No. 544 and had originally been built for export to Russia but never went overseas. Photo by Hugh M. Comer […]

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Norfolk Southern closes Alto tower NEWSWIRE

ALTOONA, Pa. – On Saturday June 16, at 12:13 p.m., Norfolk Southern’s Alto tower in downtown Altoona was vacant for the first time in 97 years, as signal crews shifted authority from the Alto control operator to a Norfolk Southern train dispatcher. Maintenance crews also removed the classic Pennsylvania Railroad signal bridges from both ends […]

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Alco time in Florida

Seaboard Coast Line C420s Nos. 1214 and 1222 work Rochelle, Fla., on April 13, 1974. The rare units later were shipped to SCL affiliate Louisville & Nashville when that railroad became power short in the late 1970s. Photo by William J. Husa Jr. […]

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Historic diesel and steam

Norfolk & Western Bicentennial SD45 No. 1776 ties onto Southern Railway 2-8-2 No. 4501 at Mullens, W.Va., on July 5, 1974, during the multi-day Independence Limited II excursion from Cincinnati to Alexandria, Va. The SD45 helped the 1911 Mikado on steep grades over former Virginian trackage between Gilbert and Narrows. Photo by J. David Ingles […]

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John Walker Barriger III: He Healed Railroads Using Pictures

John Walker Barriger441242

FULL SCREEN Photograph by John Walker Barriger III. Courtesy of the John W. Barriger III National Railroad Library, St. Louis Mercantile Library, University of Missouri, St. Louis. A westbound, steam-powered freight train on the Santa Fe Railway framed by the front window of an early diesel locomotive at Matfield Green, Kansas, circa 1940. The diesel, […]

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