Two ‘Cardinal’ veterans look back at rewarding careers

Woman Amtrak employee works to make up bedsheets in sleeping car

First of two parts. For decades, two Amtrak employees developed mutual respect for their work ethic among regular or occasional passengers, fellow employees, and each other. Janice Adams joined Amtrak as a train attendant in 1984. Leonard Claytor started with the Chesapeake & Ohio in 1969 and was promoted to a conductor in 1975 when […]

Read More…

Pere Marquette 1225 steam locomotive profile

black steam locomotive with large smoke plume on a clear blue sky day

A Pere Marquette 1225 steam locomotive profile is long past due. Not only is it one of the most active mainline steam locomotives of the past 25 years it is also an iconic symbol of steam’s greatest technological leap forward: the development of Super Power technology, introduced in the 1920s by Lima Locomotive Works of […]

Read More…

IC 4-8-2 on the James Whitcomb Riley

20151124

Illinois Central 4-8-2 No. 2452 contrasts with the stainless steel cars of New York Central’s James Whitcomb Riley as the Chicago–Cincinnati streamliner speeds past IC’s 75th Street suburban station on the South Side of Chicago in 1947. The Riley will switch to NYC rails, and power, at Kankakee, Ill. Willard A. Gardner photo […]

Read More…

SP’s “Slim Princess” on a stroll

20151127

Southern Pacific’s “Slim Princess” line tackled the rugged and arid territory along the east side of Owens Lake between the Virginia & Truckee and Keeler. Originally the Carson & Colorado, it was renamed for parent SP in 1912. Here oil-burning 4-6-0 No. 8 leads a short train through the desert. Classic Trains collection […]

Read More…

Norfolk & Western passenger trains

a streamlined passenger train

All through January 2022, Classic Trains editors are celebrating the history and heritage of the Norfolk & Western. Please enjoy this photo gallery of Norfolk & Western passenger trains selected from the image files in Kalmbach Media’s David P. Morgan Library. This gallery was first published in October 2019. […]

Read More…

Bridge replacement on the Katy

20151123

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 […]

Read More…

Rio Grande M-68 Northern

Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad 4-8-4 near Denver Union Station

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 […]

Read More…

Norfolk & Western Railway history remembered

Steam locomotive with coal train among trees

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 […]

Read More…