Santa Fe trains 93, the West Texas Express, and 94, the Eastern Express, were the Amarillo–Lubbock connection for the San Francisco Chief. Between 1955 and 1965, the trains looked like this: an E8M (rebuilt from an E1), baggage-express car, coach, and sleeper. Fred M. Springer photo […]
The Katy-Frisco Texas Special, a favorite conveyance for the Katy president’s business car, arrives in St. Louis in 1956. Fred Scott My railroad-related career started in 1941, when I was hired as a stenographer by the South-Western Freight Bureau in St. Louis. It was readily accepted for a young man who had studied shorthand and […]
The “Crandic” interurban was a safe way for University of Iowa students to travel to and from parties at Cou Falls, 15 miles north of Iowa City. Crandic car 120 is near the Cou Falls station shelter in May 1944. Classic Trains coll. The Cedar Rapids & Iowa City Railway, universally known by the abbreviation […]
Three Fort Worth & Western Railroad locomotives line up in an accidental perspective shot at Cresson, Texas, on May 30, 2013. Photo by Steve Sweeney […]
St. Louis, late 1940s: After a “race” that was not as close as the one author John Mills saw in 1941, MP 4-6-2 5327 rolls the Missourian past a Terminal Railroad Association Baldwin diesel as Frisco 4-8-2 4401 backs the Will Rogers into Union Station. Harold E. Williams What could be more exciting to an 11-year-old […]
Union Pacific NW2 No. 1091, with extra ballast and low-speed gearing, shoves the last cars of a freight train up the hump. Behind the diesel is the new yard’s car-inspection station. Wallace W. Abbey photo […]
In February 1944, Katy 2-8-2 910 rolls into Denton, Texas, with empty tank cars, probably destined for a refill in the Oklahoma oil fields. Frank Rogers During the fall and winter of 1943-44, I was in the Army’s Specialized Training Program at North Texas State Teachers College in Denton, Texas, about 35 miles north of […]
An eastbound run through train between the Southern Pacific and Seaboard Coast Line between Houston, Texas, and Jacksonville, Fla., rumbles through Orange, Texas, behind a trio of SCL units, two U30Bs and a GP30. The date is May 1972. Photo by J. Parker Lamb Jr. […]
When SP cab-forward 4173 derailed on the turntable at Tucson, “suits” and laborers reported to the scene. R. S. Plummer, Gordon Bassett coll. I have been collecting old black-and-white railroad negatives for nearly 30 years. When I receive a new batch, it’s like Christmas, opening the package and sorting through the stuff. You never know […]
A pair of Kansas City Southern GP22ECO rebuilds, products of Electro-Motive’s repowering program, work westward toward Metro Junction near Denton, Texas, on Aug. 28, 2010. The train uses ex-Santa Fe rails to reach the junction. Steve Schmollinger photo […]
An eastbound Union Pacific freight smokes it up leaving Taylor, Texas, on a December 1995 day. On the point is a leased unit, Motive Power Industries, SD40M-2 No. 9037. The unit started out as Louisville & Nashville, SD40-2 No. 1237. J. Parker Lamb photo […]
On a hot summer night in the early 1960s, Rock Island E3 626 stands at Waterloo, Iowa, with train 190. Ahead 110 miles: Columbus Junction. J. David Ingles Sad to say, this story is true. Only the name of the guilty is omitted. Sad to say, I knew this man—and still do now. It happened […]
