Few Railway Post Office cars survived the big cuts of 1967. Among the handful that remained was the St. Paul & Aberdeen RPO on Milwaukee Road train 15, the truncated remnant of the Olympian Hiawatha, on which clerks are seen at work in the spring of 1968. Photo by Don L. Hofsommer […]
A GP35 and three GP30s lead a 47-car freight up the west side of Denver & Rio Grande Western’s Tennessee Pass at Mitchell, Colorado, in September 1969. Indicative of the severity of the grade, four F units and two older Geeps are cut in as mid-train helpers. […]
In October 1953, a blanket of fog lies over Sherbrooke, Quebec, as Quebec Central G2 4-6-2 2556 awaits departure time of train 1 for Quebec City as a G3 Pacific brings train 39 into the station. Photo by Philip R. Hastings […]
In 1968, the Great Northern loaded 50 of its new Big Sky blue covered hoppers in Wolf Point, Montana, in an experimental unit train move to an export elevator in Portland, Oregon. In this posed photo, a crewman signals from the train’s modern wide-vision caboose. Photo by Great Northern […]
Chesapeake & Ohio 2-6-6-2 Mallets 1309 and 1302 are departing Scarlet, West Virginia, in June 1950 with a loaded coal train. The 10 members of C&O’s H-6 class were the last steam locomotives built for domestic use by Baldwin Locomotive Works (1949). Engine 1309 is being restored for service on the Western Maryland Scenic Railroad […]
Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic DRS-6-6-15 road-switcher No. 201 stands with a bulkhead flatcar of pulpwood, a major commodity in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The South Shore had 4 of the 82 six-motor, 1,500-horsepower units that Baldwin Locomotive Works built between 1948 and 1950. Photo by A. C. Kalmbach […]
Railfans watch as a Western Maryland coal train swings around famous Helmstetter’s Curve on its descent eastward toward Cumberland, Md., in May 1952. Photo by Edward Theisinger […]
Western Maryland 4-6-6-4 1202 drifts downgrade with an eastbound freight in the narrows along the Potomac River just west of Cumberland, Md., in May 1952. Edward Theisinger photo […]
Pacific Fruit Express was co-owned by Union Pacific and Southern Pacific. This 40-foot class R-30-12 car, built in 1923, had a wood body and steel underframe. It was typical of the thousands of “modern” refrigerator cars through the 1930s. Photo by Standard Steel Car Co. […]
Chesapeake Western, a 54-mile T-shaped west central Virginia road, employed three 1946 Baldwin DS-4-4-660s, two of which drill cars at Harrisonburg, site of the Southern Railway interchange, on November 5, 1958. CW, under Norfolk & Western control after 1954, also reached C&O at Staunton. Bob Krone photo […]
Led by 1936 power unit 9905 Zephyrus, the Twin Cities Zephyr rolls down Second Street in La Crosse, Wis., circa 1939. The slow street running was an obstacle when competing with Chicago & North Western and Milwaukee Road for Chicago to Twin Cities traffic. Elden H. Hunter photo […]
The Canadian National’s 4-8-4 U-4s were striking machines from any angle. Colors were black with green stripes, cab, and tender, accented by gold trim and white tires. This scene is at Spadina roundhouse in Toronto, on March 10, 1957. Jim Shaughnessy photo […]
