Amtrak E60 locomotives are an important bridge for Northeast Corridor electric railroading between the GG1s of the 1930s and 1940s to the AEM-7 and HHP-8 locomotives of the 1980s and early 2000s. E60 locomotive history General Electric developed the E60 C-C or six-axle locomotives at its Erie, Pa., plant in the early 1970s. The […]
The Fairbanks-Morse H12-44TS locomotive was a familiar-looking unit with different internals. FM was a fierce competitor in the early days of dieselization, perhaps remembered most for its H24-66 Train Master, a six-axle 2,400 hp road-switcher that impressed almost every railroad it demonstrated on. Among its lesser-known successes were three specialized units produced […]
Kansas City Southern Shay locomotives were oddballs on a steam locomotive roster of non-conformity. Ephraim Shay came up with the design for the geared locomotive in the 1870s. The Lima Locomotive Works popularized the design and sold almost 2,770 copies. Throughout the Leonor F. Loree administration, Kansas City Southern was a loyal Alco […]
Kansas City Southern locomotives were full of surprises in both the steam and diesel fleets. Steam locomotives saw a gradual evolution, from 2-8-0 to articulated 0-6-6-0s (an oddball in the industry for road service) and 2-8-8-0s and eventually the much-vaunted 2-10-4s of 1937. The 0-6-6-0s were the largest group of the type built […]
Canadian National U-class 4-8-4 locomotives proved to be the most versatile of the type operated in North America. It’s generally accepted that the ultimate in steam power was the 4-8-4 Northern type, if defined by criteria that includes speed, power, technology, and, perhaps most importantly, versatility. A lot of railroads capped off the steam […]
Kansas City Southern passenger trains All through April 2023, Classic Trains editors are celebrating the grit and grandeur that has been one heck of a railroad: Kansas City Southern. As KCS rides into history on the back of a new merger with Canadian Pacific, please enjoy this photo gallery of Kansas City Southern passenger trains […]
On a day when snow is flying back home in Milwaukee, I’m 900 miles away, luxuriating in 70-degree temperatures and enjoying the refreshing shade of the huge live oak that hugs the generous eaves encircling one of the South’s most distinctive train stations. The building is a replica, but don’t hold that against it. […]
An A-B-A trio of 1,500 h.p. Alco freight diesels (in later nomenclature, two FA1’s and an FB1) rolls a train on the Lehigh & New England, a 178-mile anthracite hauler and Pennsylvania-New Jersey-New York bridge line that dieselized in 1949. Alco-GE photo […]
Central Railroad of New Jersey box-cab No. 1000, built by an Alco/General Electric/Ingersoll-Rand consortium, gained the title of “first commercially successful diesel-electric locomotive” when CNJ put it to work on October 22, 1925. After a three-decade career, the unit was retired to the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore. CNJ photo […]
Missouri Pacific 2-8-4 No. 1119 rolls a southbound freight over a new highway bridge at Austin, Texas, in 1948. Bruce F. Wilson photo […]
An A-B-B-A quartet of Southern Pacific F units dressed in the distinctive “Black Widow” livery lift an eastbound freight up into the town of Tehachapi, Calif., in 1949. Exhaust from a 4-8-8-2 cab-forward helper rises in the distance. Linn Westcott photo […]
An aerial view from the 1940s shows the roundhouse for Cincinnati Union Terminal, opened in 1933. Marsh Photographic Studios photo […]
