Ma & Pa caboose

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Maryland & Pennsylvania four-wheel caboose 2003 — a little car with a big number — whiles away the day at the Ma & Pa’s Baltimore terminal in May 1955. William E. Warden Jr. photo […]

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Sad Sam

SP90

SP Coast Division train 90, the San Francisco–Los Angeles mail train known as “Sad Sam,” passes through the Chatsworth rocks northwest of L.A. in the early 1960s. Bruce Hollinshead I was a teenager when I first began biking the two miles from my home to a place called Gemco after school. Like many spots on […]

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Racing south on the Southern Belle

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Kansas City Southern E8 No. 26 races north of Heavener, Okla., with the Kansas City-bound Southern Belle on December 30, 1962. J. David Ingles Back in 1968, when I first hired out on the Kansas City Southern Railway, I bid on and was assigned to the “second trick” operator’s position at De Queen, Ark. By […]

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Close encounter with the B&OCT

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B&OCT 0-8-0 1703 hauls a string of cars from Grand Central Station, Chicago, to B&O’s Robey Street coachyard. Robert A. Caflisch In 1957 I was a 14-year-old, dismayed by the disappearance the previous year of the remaining Pacifics from commuter service on the Chicago & North Western through my hometown, Des Plaines, Ill. I knew […]

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