A crane lowers into place the next-to-last plate girder of a new bridge that will replace a wood trestle on the Missouri-Kansas-Texas. The BETHLEHEM lettering on the plate girder indicates the maker of the steel. MKT photo […]
Handsome D&RGW 1800, first of the road’s five class M-68 passenger 4-8-4s built by Baldwin in 1938, poses for a broadside portrait near Denver Union Station in August 1940. R. H. Kindig photo […]
An A-B-A set of FT diesels leads the Cotton Belt’s famous Blue Streak Merchandise freight through Texarkana, Tex., in 1949. R. S. Plummer photo […]
Norfolk & Western Railway history has two distinct phases. Before 1964, it was a coal hauler controlled by the Pennsylvania Railroad. It even looked like the Pennsy in places: Tuscan Red coaches, position-light signals, and a short electrified district — but no Belpaire fireboxes. In 1964, possibly as a reaction to the proposed merger of […]
Union Pacific’s 4-6-6-4 Challengers were too long for the turntable at North Platte, Nebr., but they could still use it. Wedges were clamped to the table’s rails at one end, then a 4-6-6-4 was backed on, leaving the rear four wheels of the tender hanging in mid-air. Art Stensvad photo […]
In a scene filled with the trappings of classic-era railroading, a Baltimore & Ohio 2-8-2 clatters across the New York Central at Shelby, Ohio, in September 1955. Today, both lines remain, but the NYC is single track and the depot buildings, water towers, sidetracks, interlocking rods, and express trucks are long gone. Philip R. Hastings […]
Clinchfield Railroad 4-6-6-4 No. 672 lends a hand at the rear of a southbound coal train at Gray, Tenn., on May 28, 1952, not long before the road became 100 percent diesel. The road engine was another Challenger, No. 662. Ed Theisinger photo […]
Industrial designer Brooks Stevens (center) and two associates pose with drawings of the Milwaukee Road’s new Olympian Hiawatha, launched in 1947. Classic Trains coll. […]
A Chicago, Burlington & Quincy switcher sets out a pair of empty stock cars for loading at a Wyoming stock pen in 1955. William A. Akin photo […]
The 3-foot-gauge Boston, Revere Beach & Lynn was built in 1875 and in 1928 electrified its double-track line along the shore north of Boston. The line included this swing bridge at Point of Pines. William Butler Jr. photo […]
All through December, Classic Trains editors are celebrating the Midwest’s Chicago Great Western Railway. Please enjoy this photo gallery of CGW freight trains selected from the image archives of Kalmbach Media’s David P. Morgan Library. The CGW was considered one of the Granger railroads of the Midwest linking Chicago, St. Paul, and Kansas City. It […]
Canadian Pacific 2-10-4 5919 simmers at Field, B.C., before heading east into Kicking Horse Pass with a train. CP’s 2-10-4s were the biggest locomotives in Canada. Albert M. Rich coll. […]
