Steam from Milwaukee Road class A 4-4-2 No. 2’s cylinder cocks envelops a bystander just outside Chicago Union Station as the Hiawatha begins its dash to Minneapolis in 1935. Alexander Maxwell photo […]
Original Hiawatha departing Chicago
Chicago & Eastern Illinois locomotives remembered
Chicago & Eastern Illinois locomotives served the road well through many decades of operation. C&EI was a coal-hauling railroad and, other than some early switchers, stuck with steam through World War II. Three E7s and a bunch of F3s made quick work of dieselizing the line from 1946 onward, with the last steam […]
Amtrak GP40 diesel locomotives
Amtrak GP40 diesel locomotives came in two flavors: eight former GO Transit GP40TCs acquired in October 1988 and 15 straight GP40s leased between May 1991 and June 1993. The 3,000 hp GP40 is a standard bearer of freight motive power in the second half of the 20th century. Introduced by EMD in 1968, the model […]
Orders at Reverse
In about 1950, the operator at Reverse, Idaho, hands up orders to the engine crew of westbound freight 3-257. Two 2-8-8-0 pushers have been removed here after assisting the train up Medbury Hill. Henry R. Griffiths Jr. photo […]
Why Michigan Central Station matters
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 […]
N&W class A ready to go
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 […]
L&N Pacific departing Louisville
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 express reefer
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 […]
Helpers on Helmstetter’s Curve
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 […]
Prominent Budd-built passengers trains, excluding Zephyrs
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 remembered
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. […]
Hand-switching a hopper car
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 […]
