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‘Penny pictures’ of the Sandy River
Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes 2-foot-gauge Mogul No. 16 pokes out of the covered depot at Kingfield, Maine. Charlie French, Mallory Hope Ferrell coll. While still a teenager in the early 1950s, I corresponded with a man who had grown up on the 2-foot-gauge lines of Maine. Arthur French, by then elderly, collected Indian Head […]
Finis for Philo
A 1962 freight derailment spelled the end for the century-old Wabash depot at little Philo, Ill. Glen Brewer My clock-radio came on at the usual morning hour with the local news. The date was Wednesday, October 3, 1962. The announcer reported a train wreck in Philo, Ill., the previous evening, blocking the Wabash Railroad’s main […]
Delaware & Hudson in the Sterzing era
Read more about the Bruce Sterzing era on the D&H in three news articles from Trains magazine. Download each story by clicking on the underlined PDF below. “D&H: 150 Years Old and Still Solvent” by J. David Ingles, published in the May 1973 issue of Trains magazine D&H 150 Years Old DOWNLOAD “Learning the Alphabet” […]
NP 4-6-6-4 at Livingston, Mont.
As trackworkers tend to a frozen switch, Northern Pacific 4-6-6-4 No. 5122 prepares to head east out of Livingston, Mont., with a freight sometime in the late 1940s. NP’s Livingston shops, still used by today’s Montana Rail Link, are visible at right. C. W. Jernstrom photo […]
CB&Q O-5 photos by Jim Shaughnessy
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The doctor’s appointment
Horseshoe Curve, 1940: Freight on track 1, passenger on track 2, smoke from a train climbing on track 3 or 4. H. W. Pontin You could not avoid liking my uncle, Matthew McGrail. Matt was a medical doctor in Bradford, Pa., by profession, but he was a full-time rail enthusiast. He befriended many crews of […]
More than a touch of class
The Santa Fe was a class act, from its Warbonnet diesels to how it dealt with derailments. Gordon Glattenberg Back in 1955, when I was 22, I gained my first post-college newspaper reporting job with the Avalanche-Journal in Lubbock, Texas—not exactly the center of the railroad universe. Little did I know that within a few […]
Classic Trains, Fall 2012
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Inspired by steam
Boston & Maine 4-6-2 3719 was one of the machines that captivated author Graulty. Charles A. Brown I was always fascinated by machines. When I was a boy during the Depression, the most impressive machinery I got to see was steam locomotives. I grew up in Troy, N.Y., on the Hudson River 150 miles north […]
Getting to know Miss Katy
In February 1944, Katy 2-8-2 910 rolls into Denton, Texas, with empty tank cars, probably destined for a refill in the Oklahoma oil fields. Frank Rogers During the fall and winter of 1943-44, I was in the Army’s Specialized Training Program at North Texas State Teachers College in Denton, Texas, about 35 miles north of […]
Summer Sharknoses
Mistaken identity: Rumors of Baldwin Sharknose diesels in PRR freight service prompted a 14-year-old boy to visit Altoona, where he had a satisfying—if erroneous—encounter with a pair of FM Erie-builts. Fred Kern, Jay Potter coll. From the look of the icicles and snow in this photograph, December 20, 1960, must have been a cold day […]
