Bellevue: Norfolk Southern’s Midwest Powerhouse

Bellevue Yard It’s over 5 miles long. It’s capable of serving a hundred trains a day. It’s the center point of five of Norfolk Southern’s busiest lines. Officially known as Moorman Yard, Norfolk Southern’s Bellevue hump yard is one of the largest in the railroad’s system. Centrally located in the northern Ohio heartland, it’s a […]

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Never too many Denver & Rio Grande Western narrow gauge books

Man sleeps in steam locomotive cab

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 […]

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Five mind-blowing facts about the GM Aerotrain

Silver and red futuristic train. Five mind-blowing facts about the GM Aerotrain.

Mind-blowing facts about the GM Aerotrain By the 1950s it was clear that the passenger train was not the wave of the future. Automobiles and airliners were the next chapter in personal transportation for the United States. In some cases, however, the railroads wanted one more round in the fight to retain and regain passengers. […]

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EMD F2: A diesel locomotive hiding in plain sight

EMD F2 diesel locomotive For a number of years, there was a streamlined diesel road locomotive hiding in plain sight, and it was only the savviest of fans with a penchant for details and numbers that could ferret them out from the rest of the herd. It is the EMD F2. Only 104 were built […]

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An engineer’s life: Trust me

An orange BNSF engine approaches through tree on either side of the tracks with a mountain in the background.

I wrote last month about working grain trains west as a young brakeman. This month’s story, entitled “Trust me,” is from late 2008 when I was working as a locomotive engineer. In my 42 years on the railroad, the last 30 as an engineer, I took pride in being qualified on three mountain-grade territories: Stampede […]

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Erie Railroad history remembered

Smoking steam locomotive among many railroad signals

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 […]

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Largest 2-8-2 Mikado: Great Northern’s O-8 class

Largest 2-8-2 Mikado steam locomotive in yard

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 […]

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Preview Classic Trains‘ November 2023

Centercab diesel locomotive in front of engine shed

Preview Classic Trains‘ November 2023 content! Here’s a preview of what’s coming in the next month. Become a Trains.com member so you don’t miss any of this great content! If you have a story suggestion, email editor@classictrainsmag.com   Smallest operating railroads in 1973 These 5 small railroads each operated just 2 mile of main line […]

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Locomotives we wish we could have preserved

Low profile, lightweight streamlined locomotive.

This is a list of locomotives we wish we could have preserved, the ones that got away. Gone, in some cases, before we even realized that they were on the endangered species list. Going from work-a-day diesel locomotives to denizens of deadlines, they didn’t make it to museums or public displays, just the junk man. […]

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Ask Trains: Tank car color schemes

A line of white-painted railroad tank cars with a swath of green grass in the foreground, framed by a tree branch

Q What is the meaning of tank car color schemes? Is there a color code? Some tank cars have a contrasting horizontal stripe on the middle section of the tank, while other tank cars are painted a solid color. Since some tank cars carry hazardous or toxic chemicals while others carry edible materials, are the […]

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Who built the steam locomotives

A steam locomotive rolls along under a dense black cloud of exhaust smoke

Who built the steam locomotives? In the transportation business of today, “Big Three” invariably means General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler, the dominant U.S. domestic automakers. But just a few decades ago, when the manufacture of steam locomotives was a bellwether American industry, “Big Three” could only have meant Alco, Baldwin, and Lima. Maybe these great […]

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