ALTOONA, Pa. — A trio of aging 100-foot-tall yard floodlights that once illuminated the railroad exhibit at the 1939-40 New York World’s Fair is finding a new home here at the Railroaders Memorial Museum. Fabricated with a three-legged cross-section, the towers were among at least four built for the 17-acre railroad grounds, which, in addition […]
Erie Railroad passenger trains: The Erie Railroad is Classic Trains’ railroad of the month for October 2023. All this month you’ll find interesting articles detailing the history of the Erie in text and photographs. Please enjoy this Erie Railroad passenger trains photo gallery, originally published in March 2016 and selected from the archives of […]
Three red-and-white EMD road-switchers — two GP35s and a GP40 — lead an eastbound freight across the great steel viaduct that spans a valley and the Baltimore & Ohio main line at Meyersdale, Pa., in July 1973. Today the bridge carries only a recreational trail. Victor Hand photo […]
Does the world need another book about the Denver & Rio Grande Western narrow gauge? Someone might reasonably ask. Of all railroads with a literature disproportionate to its relative economic importance, the D&RGW is Exhibit A. To underscore the point, I stopped into the Kalmbach Media library to do some rudimentary research: when […]
Erie Railroad history starts, surprisingly, with a canal. “The Work of the Age” was a proclamation by New York City’s Common Council upon the opening of the 300-mile New York & Erie Railway in 1851, “Erie” referring to one of the Great Lakes. New York City had become the natural gateway to the […]
For much of the first half of the 20th century, the 2-8-2 Mikado was the dominant freight locomotive of the steam era. With its medium weight and medium power, it became the go-to, general-purpose engine — sort of the GP38 of its era. Consider how the World War I-era United States Railroad Administration divvied up […]
Located outside Indianapolis, Avon Yard was one of several modern freight classification yards New York Central opened in the 1950s. NYC photo […]
The City of Miami passenger train one of three coordinated services linking Chicago with Miami. There was a time — like, as recently as 1979 — there was direct rail passenger service between the Upper Midwest (notably Chicago) and Florida. This ended with several slashes of Amtrak routes as a result of budget […]
A 65-foot mill gondola is the latest addition to the Micro-Trains Line Co. N scale freight car lineup. The injection-molded plastic model features positionable drop ends, metal wheelsets, and body-mounted Magne-Matic couplers. The Micro-Trains gondola is based on a Santa Fe class GA-47 prototype built by General American Transportation Corp. (GATC) in 1937. The gondolas […]
Great Northern’s postwar streamliners between Seattle and Vancouver, the Internationals, carried 60-seat coaches with a pine-tree motif in their upholstery. GN photo […]
Georgia Railroad locomotives included a mix of small steam designs and EMD models. By 1914 the Georgia Road was powered by an assortment of 4-4-0s, 0-6-0s, Moguls, Ten-Wheelers, four modern Lima 2-8-2s, and a pair of light Pacifics. A handful of all-steel baggage cars, RPOs, and coaches shared the car roster with a […]
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