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Like its Midwest rivals, the Chicago & North Western Railway jumped on the idea of brand-named passenger trains. However, it took a different route with the name in the form of a three-digit number: 400. The name [or number] stuck as the railroad rolled out a prominent fleet of Chicago & North Western 400 passenger […]
A July 1947 aerial view shows the Pennsylvania Railroad’s big roundhouse at Crestline, Ohio. The long engine at middle left is No. 6100, the 6-4-4-6 duplex of 1939. Classic Trains coll. […]
An operator pulls the armstrong levers to align a route at busy State Line Tower, near Hammond, Ind., on the Chicago & Western Indiana. As the track diagram shows, several railroads operated through the 200-plus lever plant. Wallace W. Abbey photo […]
A Southern Pacific 2-8-0 pulls a log train on the Cloudcroft branch near Alamogordo, N.Mex. This view is from 1946, three years before the line was abandoned. Henry Garcia photo […]
An A-B-B set of F7’s leads the Santa Fe’s Fast Mail Express toward Los Angeles at West Victorville, Calif., in 1950. The train’s 14-car consist is heavy with baggage, express, and mail storage cars, but it also includes a Railway Post Office car. A baggage-coach combine brought up the rear as a rider car for […]
The Baltimore & Ohio’s passenger terminal in Chicago was Grand Central Station, built in 1890 to the plans of noted architect S. S. Bemen. The Wisconsin Central Railroad actually commissioned the station, but later sold it to the B&O; other users were Chicago Great Western and Pere Marquette. Grand Central was razed in 1970; its […]
Chicago has always had a plethora of terminal railroads. Many have come and gone, but a handful with historical roots dating to the late 19th Century are still active today, and vital to keeping the freight and passenger traffic consistently moving in and out of the city. These are Historical Chicago terminal railroads that are […]
Chicago & North Western class E-4 streamlined Hudson sails through West Chicago, Ill., with one of the Union Pacific Challenger trains in September 1945. The second car in the train is a U.S. Army hospital car. Henry J. McCord photo […]
As trackworkers tend to a frozen switch, Northern Pacific 4-6-6-4 No. 5122 prepares to head east out of Livingston, Mont., with a freight sometime in the late 1940s. NP’s Livingston shops, still used by today’s Montana Rail Link, are visible at right. C. W. Jernstrom photo […]
Union Pacific 4-8-4 803 and a Southern Pacific E7 wait outside Los Angeles Union Passenger terminal in the late 1940s, ready to back down to their respective trains. The E7 is for the Golden State, while the 4-8-4 is likely for the Los Angeles Limited. Herbert Johnson photo […]
Southern Railway FP7 6141 and an F3 roar uphill into the hamlet of Saluda, N.C., top of famous 4.7-percent Saluda Grade, with the Charleston, S.C.–Cincinnati Carolina Special in the early 1950s. Linn H. Westcott photo […]
50 years ago in Trains: Bombarding Beaumont in 1948 WHAT a grand and extraordinary depiction this photograph is of Standard Railroading in full and final flower! For the flagship of Southern Pacific’s New Orleans-Los Angeles Sunset Route the Sunset Limited, which is destined to become the last of America’s great passenger trains to be dieselized […]
