Last ride north from Xenia

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PRR passenger service from Xenia north to Springfield, Ohio, — protected by an old gas-electric motor car — ended on July 21, 1953.  Harry V. Noble Xenia, my hometown in southwestern Ohio, was on the Pennsylvania’s Pittsburgh-St. Louis main line 16 miles east of Dayton. Xenia was also the base of a branch line north […]

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611: the video!

Norfolk & Western No. 611 is back in steam and Trains was there to capture every moment. See this preview video of a longer DVD we are creating to commemorate this historic return to glory for the greatest passenger steam locomotive ever built. Only from Trains! […]

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Learning the lingo at Flagstaff

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At Flagstaff, Ariz., where Santa Fe operator Elisa Lindenberg apprenticed in 1943, an operator hands up orders to an FT-powered eastbound perishables train in 1947. Joe Lynch The time was August 1943, the place, Flagstaff, Arizona. My mother, Elisa Ward Lindenberg, and I had come west because Zane Gray’s books had captivated her and she […]

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Drew’s Trackside Adventures: Episode 25 – Quarry tour along the CN main

Close-up view of a rock-carrying conveyor belt in a rail-served quarry.

Through special arrangements with Lannon Stone Products, Inc., a rail-served rock quarry along the Canadian National main line, host Drew Halverson and the MRVP video crew follow knowledgeable employees through the Sussex, Wisconsin, operation. In this industrial-sized adventure, you’ll enjoy seeing unique footage of rock blasting, crushing, processing, loading, and hauling, plus plenty of modeling […]

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Get well soon

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Southern SD45 3134 leaves a pall of smoke over the depot area at Salisbury, N.C., July 17, 1977. Mike Small Growing up in close proximity to a main line, I’ve always valued speed and power in railroading. We lived about a mile south of Jamestown, N.C., where Southern Railway’s Washington, D.C., to Atlanta, Ga., route […]

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Leviathan in steam

David Kloke tells Trains readers about his latest project to build a replica of President Abraham Lincoln’s funeral car in the June 2015 issue of Trains. While we wait to see that project roll on rails, we can enjoy a video showing off Kloke’s major claim to fame: a complete, operational replica of an 1860s steam […]

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Tank engine with a tender

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Even though it’s a tank locomotive (with the water tank around the boiler), Rayonier 2-6-6-2T No. 111 also sports a tender for additional water capacity. The fitting atop the stack is a Gerlinger spark arrestor. Whit Towers photo […]

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