Walking out the 15th Street side entrance to Detroit’s Michigan Central Station last Friday morning, I found myself channeling the great baseball play-by-play man Jack Buck. “I can’t believe what I just saw!” Buck’s epic quote came, of course, when Dodger Kirk Gibson launched his epic home run off A’s reliever Dennis Eckersley in game […]
Norfolk & Western class A No. 1239 is ready to depart Roanoke, Va., with eastbound time freight 84 in 1954. The potent 2-6-6-4 was built in N&W’s shops here just five years earlier. W. A. Akin Jr. photo […]
Louisville & Nashville engine 243, a USRA light Pacific, passes Highland Park on the south side of Louisville with train 23, the daytime local to Corbin, Ky. Many employees of L&N’s South Louisville Shops lived in Highland Park, today mostly obliterated by the Louisville airport. Charles B. Castner photo […]
Illinois Central car 4840, pictured near Central Station, Chicago, is one of 35 standard wood refrigerator cars the road converted to express service by adding high-speed trucks and steam and signal lines. Mainline Photos […]
Two big 2-10-0s cut in as mid-train helpers assist in lifting a train up the Western Maryland main line west of Cumberland, Md., at famous Helmstetter’s Curve in May 1952. The road engine and rear-end helper are also Decapods. WM’s class I-2 engines were the heaviest 2-10-0s ever built. Edward Theisinger photo […]
The Budd Co. and Chicago, Burlington & Quincy went hand in hand in building the streamlined Zephyr fleet, though the Midwestern railroad wasn’t the only customer to the car manufacturer. By 1941, the company produced nearly 500 stainless-steel passenger cars to more than a dozen railroads. The 1939 Silver Meteor and 1941 Empire State Express […]
Chicago & Eastern Illinois passenger trains: All through June 2024, Classic Trains editors are celebrating the history and heritage of “The Chicago Line.” Please enjoy this photo gallery of Chicago & Eastern Illinois passenger trains, originally published online in 2015. […]
Employees of New Jersey short line Union Transportation Co. use pinch bars and muscle power to move a car of coal a few feet at New Egypt. As coal is released from the hopper doors it is fed by hand-shoveling to the power-driven conveyor for loading into the tender of the line’s only engine, leased […]
Welcome – Pennsy perspective Head End – A potpourri of railroad history, then and now Fast Mail – Letters from readers on our Winter 2023 issue Mileposts – Commentary by Kevin P. Keefe True Color – Detroit, Toledo & Ironton Maumee River crossing Short Rails – Manufacturers Railway Co. The Way It Was – Tales […]
Four GP9s climb west on the Chesapeake & Ohio main line with empty hoppers to be reloaded with coal in the late 1950s. Classic Trains coll. […]
Pacific 801 leads Rio Grande train 10, the local from Craig, Colo., to Denver, out of Tunnel 29 east of Pinecliff on Dec. 31, 1950. Otto Perry photo […]
One of the Chicago & Illinois Midland’s distinctive green-and-red cabooses trails 85 empty coal hoppers heading south at Atterbury, Ill., in May 1952. Edward Theisinger photo […]
