Chariots of fire on the Erie

HotmetalERIE

A hot-metal “bottle car,” one of three in an Erie train that included eight hopper cars as spacers, passes DeForest Junction, between Youngstown and Warren, Ohio, in 1966. Clifford A. Redanz One of the more interesting aspects of steel-mill railroading were the “hot-metal runs” that moved molten iron from the blast furnaces to the open […]

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Classic Chicago passenger trains

FULL SCREEN John Bjorklund, collection of Center for Railroad Photography and Art Santa Fe passenger train No. 1, the westbound ‘San Francisco Chief,’ is seen at Dearborn Station in Chicago in December 1970, just a few months before the creation of Amtrak. FULL SCREEN John Bjorklund, collection of Center for Railroad Photography and Art A […]

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Close encounters of the 4-6-4 kind

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Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo’s two ex-NYC J-1e’s were among the Hudsons that captivated a Buffalo boy in the late 1940s. Frank Clodfelter While growing up in Cleveland and Buffalo after World War II, a close encounter with a Hudson-type locomotive was just a train ride away. My first memory was as a four-year-old. My family […]

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Classic Chicago freight trains

FULL SCREEN John Bjorklund, collection of Center for Railroad Photography and Art The Chicago & North Western switches newsprint cars in downtown Chicago in September 1981. FULL SCREEN John Bjorklund, collection of Center for Railroad Photography and Art The Chicago & North Western switches newsprint cars in downtown Chicago in September 1981. FULL SCREEN John […]

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Whose cab ride is this?

erieRS2hoboken

Erie RS2 904 clatters into the Lackawanna’s Hoboken Terminal with a Main Line local in 1956. Richard H. Young Youth is wasted on young people, so the saying goes. Kids don’t have the … well … maturity to know what’s special in their world. Watch the crowds at Disneyland. It’s the adults who are agog […]

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NKP Berkshire making time

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The Nickel Plate carried a lot of meat traffic from Chicago and other cities. Here, Berkshire No. 776, with two Swift cars at the head end, rushes a long string of meat reefers east near Vermilion, Ohio, in 1957. H. S. Ludlow photo […]

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Classic Chicago commuter trains

FULL SCREEN John Bjorklund, collection of Center for Railroad Photography and Art A Burlington Northern commuter train arrives at Chicago Union Station in July 1971, as seen from Roosevelt Road. FULL SCREEN John Bjorklund, collection of Center for Railroad Photography and Art A Burlington Northern commuter train arrives at west suburban Riverside, Ill., in July […]

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PRR doodlebugs

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Three Pennsylvania Railroad self-propelled motor cars (“doodlebugs”) layover near Penn Station, Baltimore, in May 1955. The cars worked commuter runs on the old Northern Central to New Freedom, Pa. Classic Trains coll. […]

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