Montreal circa 1952

CPs St Luc Yard roundhouse-BEV

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 […]

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On the waterfront

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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 […]

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Indiana Northeastern locomotive roster

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Indiana Northeastern GP30s Nos. 2185 and 2230 approach the Fox Lake Road overpass at Angola, Ind. Steve Smedley Veteran photojournalist Steve Smedley documents the history and operations of shortline Indiana Northeastern, and pays tribute to the line’s hand-me-down GP30s and hard-working railroaders in “Second-generation Sojourn” in Locomotive 2014. Explore the line’s entire all-EMD roster here […]

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A hard way to make a living

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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 […]

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Mixed train through the muskeg

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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, […]

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Kindnesses on the Omaha Road

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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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WM 44-tonner

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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 […]

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Streamliners at Spencer event, 2014

Three streamlined, cab unit locomotives appear before crowds.

  See this photo gallery of streamlined locomotives that dazzled crowds at the North Carolina Transportation Museum complex in Spencer, N.C., in Summer 2014. This is a modified version of the photo gallery that first appeared on Classic Trains‘ website. […]

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What kind of day did you have?

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Bystanders inspect a sedan deluged with coke during a derailment of an L&N train in Chattanooga. C. K. Marsh Jr. One day in 1965, a friend and I were searching for the obscure terminal of the Tennessee, Alabama & Georgia Railroad in the Alton Park section of Chattanooga. Coming up on a railroad crossing, we […]

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C&EI’s Meadowlark

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E7 diesel 1101 leads Chicago & Eastern Illinois’ southbound Meadowlark at 63rd Street station (“Little Englewood”), Chicago, in the late 1940s. The obscure orange-and-blue streamliner terminated at the unlikely location of Cyprus, Ill. (population 300). William N. Clark photo […]

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