Into the 1960s, Chicago & North Western passenger trains blanketed the Upper Midwest, especially in Wisconsin — a popular vacationland until the jet airliner beckoned travelers instead to the likes of Southern California, Miami, and Las Vegas. In the late 1950s, new C&NW management saw the writing on the walls of the railroad’s majestic […]
An artist’s rendering depicts the interior of the dining car on the Milwaukee Road’s 1947 Olympian Hiawatha. Classic Trains coll. […]
I don’t keep bucket lists, but one thing I’d been hoping to visit one day was the famed Oyster Bar, the historic restaurant that’s been operating in the catacombs of New York City’s Grand Central Terminal nearly continuously for 110 years. I finally got my chance a couple of weeks ago during a short research […]
Bessemer & Lake Erie locomotive 403, one of 82 six-motor, 1,500 h.p. DRS-6-6-15 road-switchers built by Baldwin between 1948 and 1950, idles in 1970. Eric Hirsimaki photo […]
Montana’s Butte, Anaconda & Pacific relied on a fleet of 28 General Electric box-cabs after it electrified its line in 1913. The road received these two road-switcher-style motors from GE in 1957, then went to diesels in 1967. General Electric photo […]
Crewmen toss pine knots into the tender of Mississippi & Alabama 2-6-2 Prairie-type No. 4 at the wood rack, or “wooding-up platform,” in Leakesville, Miss., in September 1948. The Prairie-type was the 17-mile road’s only locomotive. C.W. Witbeck photo […]
Well-tended Western Maryland 4-6-2 Pacific-type No. 153 stands beside the joint Chesapeake & Ohio-Western Maryland station at Durbin, W.Va., with train No. 53 from Elkins. The railroad had 19 such locomotives in the K-1 and K-2 classes, built by Baldwin between 1909 and 1912. Robert F. Collins photo […]
Fairbanks-Morse’ distinctive Erie-Built diesel locomotives were the builder’s entry into the six-axle passenger locomotive market. FM sold 111 total units between December 1945 and February 1949. They were the best-selling FM cab unit models; second place went to the CFA/CFB-16-4 “C-Liners” with 90 units sold. FM’s big Erie-Builts were named for being assembled […]
Preview Classic Trains’ December 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 The EMC TA Diesel – A Locomotive That Kind of Did It An early passenger diesel, the TA […]
Gainesville Midland 2-10-0 No. 207 does the honors on a freight from Athens to Gainesville, Ga., in April 1957. The 40-mile road in northern Georgia had five such locomotives on its roster with various backgrounds, along with two 2-8-0s. Philip R. Hastings photo […]
Soldiers of the U.S. Army’s 35th Division board cars at Camp Robinson, Ark., on December 18, 1941, less than two weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The era of the troop train had thus begun. U.S. Army Signal Corps. photo […]
During a Lake Erie snow squall at Stony Point, Pa., about 12 miles west of Meadville, K-5 Pacific-type No. 2924 stands in the siding as an unidentified K-5a dashes past with an eastbound train. The railroad had 160 locomotives of the 4-6-2 wheel arrangement in five classes and multiple subclasses built by Baldwin, Lima, Richmond, […]
