OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — A 31-year effort by the Southern Appalachia Railway Museum has reached fruition with the acquisition of Central of Georgia combine car Fort Mitchell, giving the museum the complete four-car streamlined, stainless-steel Man o’ War trainset built by Budd Co. in 1945. When restoration efforts are complete, the museum believes it will […]
Shasta Daylight The Oakland-bound Shasta Daylight rumbles over the big, curved trestle at Redding, Calif., in mid-1950. The Shasta was diesel-powered from its July 1949 launch. James L. Martin photo […]
Railroad man Gainesville Midland Railroad conductor L. C. Birchfield is perched in a caboose cupola in the late 1950s. The railroad ran between Gainesville and Athens in northern Georgia and one time had a branch to Monroe. Seaboard Air Line purchased the road in June 1959. Philip R. Hastings photo […]
Rolling fortress With two big engines leading a dozen heavyweight cars into the desert, the Southern Pacific’s Sunset Limited looks like a rolling fortress at Palm Springs, Calif., sometime in the mid-1940s. Walter H. Thrall Jr. photo […]
Western Pacific Railroad history The Western Pacific Railroad almost “had it all.” It ran passenger and freight trains, in mountain and desert scenery, behind vintage steam engines that survived World War II and hauled excursions, and then colorful diesels, from early green-and-yellow FTs through orange-and-silver Fs and Geeps to dark-green second-generation EMDs and GEs. It […]
Cab-forward conveyance A puff of oil smoke hangs in the air over Truckee as AC 4-8-8-2 No. 4185 gets the westbound Overland moving after a station stop. In 6 hours, the train will arrive at Oakland Pier. Jim Morley photo […]
Man at work Baltimore & Ohio Dispatcher Carl Donald makes an entry on his trainsheet in DR Tower in Deshler, Ohio, in the early 1950s. Deshler lies at the crossing of the B&O’s Pittsburgh to Chicago and Toledo to Cincinnati main lines. Wallace W. Abbey photo […]
The Illinois Central Railroad is Classic Trains editors’ Railroad of the Month for July 2021. Please enjoy this photo gallery of IC locomotives selected from the files of Kalmbach Media’s David P. Morgan Library. Only from Classic Trains! […]
Getting grain to market A truck dumps its load of wheat through the floor grate into the bin at an elevator in Fowlerville, Mich., in 1950. The framework in the background is for elevating wagons and trucks that don’t dump on their own. The town is located on the Chesapeake & Ohio’s Pere Marquette main […]
Great Lakes outpost Chesapeake & Ohio SW9 No. 5251 idles by the carferry City of Midland 41 in Milwaukee in 1978. The C&O’s Milwaukee trackage was reached only by the carferries across Lake Michigan. Brian Buchanan photo […]
All through July 2021, Classic Trains editors are celebrating the grit and glory of the Illinois Central Railroad. Please enjoy this photo gallery of IC freight selected from the image archive of Kalmbach Media’s David P. Morgan Library. Only from Classic Trains! […]
Sunset on the swamp Framed by trees heavy with Spanish moss, the eastbound Southern Pacific Sunset Limited crosses a bayou near Morgan City, La., about 80 miles west of New Orleans, in 1958. Diesels and streamlined cars came in 1950. Classic Trains collection […]
