The General Electric BQ23-7 turned out to be an odd diesel that didn’t. At the dawn of railroads eschewing cabooses as unnecessary expenses, locomotive builders were putting forth ideas to accommodate train crews. One option was the BQ23-7, the Q indicating crew Quarters. General Electric’s design team took its standard 2,250 hp […]
Rio Grande engine 1703, from the road’s first group of 4-8-4s, heads a westbound train out of Denver into the 6.2-mile darkness of Moffat Tunnel in August 1950. W. R. Berg Jr. photo […]
Penn Central history began existence on Feb. 1, 1968. More accurately, it was incorporated in 1846 as the Pennsylvania Railroad; changed its name to Pennsylvania New York Central Transportation Co. on Feb. 1, 1968, when it merged the New York Central; and adopted the name Penn Central Co. on May 8, 1968. On Oct. 1, […]
Among the cars built for the Milwaukee Road’s 1947 Olympian Hiawatha were 52-seat coaches, produced in the road’s own shops. The interior paneling matched the exterior paint scheme, which was soon modified. MILW photo […]
A long way from the broad, flat Water Level Route, New York Central 2-6-6-2 Mallet 1940 is seen in an undated photo on the road’s line to Charleston and other West Virginia points. Classic Trains collection […]
The railroad industry has created more than its share of publicity photographs over the past 150 years. Here, standing in Kalmbach Media’s David P. Morgan Memorial Library, I’m surrounded by tens of thousands of them, mostly 8 x 10 black-and-white prints, all of which came flooding into the company after the 1940 launch of […]
There’s a dusting of snow on the ground as Rio Grande 2-8-8-2 No. 3613 approaches the Tennessee Pass tunnel with an eastbound freight in October 1946. R. H. Kindig photo […]
E7s, E8s, and a pair of Baldwin switchers on trains from Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington wait for horse-racing fans to finish their business at Bowie Race Track in December 1953. H. N. Proctor photo […]
The newness of green-and-yellow F2 No. 401 contrasts with the antiquity of the wooden cars as the Atlantic & Eastern Carolina’s daily passenger train crosses the Trent River at New Bern, N.C., in 1946. The 96-mile A&EC had two F units, both F2s. A&EC photo […]
A clerk tosses two mail delivery pouches out the door of his speeding Railway Post Office car while simultaneously keeping the catcher arm raised in preparation for snagging outbound mail. This is on the Boston & Maine in the late 1940s. Edward J. Howard Jr. photo […]
A Pacific is in charge of Minneapolis & St. Louis’s St. Louis–St. Paul North Star Limited between Chaska and Eden Prairie, Minn., in the 1920s or early ’30s. Don Hofsommer collection […]
An A-B-A set of F3 diesels is on the point of Delaware, Lackawanna & Western train 47, a morning run between Hoboken, N.J., and Binghamton, N.Y., at East Stroudsburg, Pa., in May 1954. Jack Emerick photo […]
