At frosty Higgins, Texas, on the Santa Fe, author Metzger’s crane parts sit sidetracked as SD40-2s pass with a freight. Bill Metzger While my hometown Pittsburgh Steelers were playing the Seattle Seahawks in the 2007 Super Bowl, I got to thinking about where I was the last time the Steelers won football’s biggest game. It […]
Selkirk Yard near Albany, N.Y. New York Central Cornerstone of New York Central’s $25 million “Castleton Cutoff” improvement project, Selkirk opened on November 20, 1924. Central’s objective was to bypass congestion at Albany, where two Hudson River drawbridges and the “Water Level Route’s” one big bump, the 1.75 percent West Albany grade between the Hudson […]
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Headhouse and platforms Jacksonville Terminal Co. Jacksonville Terminal was a monument to Florida’s status as the southern vacation destination of choice for the eastern half of the U.S. Few travelers got off here; instead, the city was the funnel for trains arriving over the Atlantic Coast Line, Seaboard Air Line, and Southern Railway on their […]
Pennsylvania Railroad E8 No. 5795 leads train 32, the New York–bound St. Louisan, out of one of the twin tunnels at Spruce Creek, Pa., in the mid-1950s. Don Wood photo […]
CP’s St. Luc Yard roundhouse Walter R. Allen for CPR Canadian Pacific in July 1950 opened its sprawling new St. Luc Yard in the “wilds” above the cities of Lachine and Cote St. Luc, Quebec. Built to relieve congestion at CPR’s Hochelaga and Outremont Yards in Montreal, St. Luc included this 37-stall roundhouse, completed in […]
DL&W’s Hoboken Terminal Fred W. Schneider III Opened on February 25, 1907, the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western’s Hoboken (N.J.) Terminal replaced an earlier facility on the site destroyed by fire in 1905. The new terminal featured 16 tracks and 6 ferry slips along the Hudson River across from New York City. Catenary came to the […]
Illinois Central 2-8-2 Mikado 1544 is eastbound at Villa Park, Ill., on a cold day in 1951. Henry M. Stange Some years ago, after a reunion of my old 10th Engineer Battalion at Springfield, Ill., I boarded Amtrak’s Statehouse for Chicago. I’d never ridden the former Chicago & Alton before, but I was eager to […]
Near Conklin, Alberta, NAR mixed train 77 ambles toward Fort McMurray on June 26, 1972, the second day of author Armstrong’s four-day adventure. James B. Armstrong At 5 o’clock every Sunday and Wednesday evening, mixed train No. 75 would trundle slowly out of Dunvegan Yards (Edmonton), headquarters and southern terminus of the Northern Alberta Railways, […]
Omaha Road 4-6-2 No. 500 departs Minneapolis with a train for Superior, Wis., in August 1950. Bob Borcherding At nearly 70 years of age, I am still enthralled at the passage of trains. Today’s trains—often featuring high-horsepower diesel locomotives, radio-controlled helpers, rotary-dump coal cars by the unit-trainload, and containers carrying products from halfway around the […]
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Western Maryland 76, one of two GE 44-tonners the road had, both built in 1943, does some switching at WM’s Hillen Street terminal in Baltimore in July 1948. H. A. McBride photo […]
