Coast-to-coast passenger train

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Amtrak’s westbound ‘Sunset Limited’ pauses for a station stop in Atmore, Ala., at sunrise in January 1995. It was the nation’s first and only transcontinental passenger train. Bob Johnston Q There were numerous named passenger trains that spanned distances beyond the reach of a single railroad, such as the California Zephyr between Chicago and Oakland, […]

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Return trip to Tucumcari

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Tucumcari, July 1963: Nameless Los Angeles–Chicago train 40 has arrived with SP power and will depart behind Rock Island FP7 409. The RDC foreground is on the rear of Rock Island 22 for Memphis. Richard J. Anderson It was a hot day in the summer of 1963. I was driving from my home in Iowa […]

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Fort Wayne society to restore SD9 to operating condition

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FORT WAYNE, Ind. – Steel Dynamics, Inc. has donated $3,000 to the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society Inc. for Project 358, an effort to restore the society’s 1950s diesel locomotive, Nickel Plate Road No. 358. The funds will be allocated toward electrical cable, paint, generators or other locomotive parts in need of refurbishment. One of […]

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Santa Fe train 76 and 17 tons of sand

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Santa Fe PA No. 61, whose long nose may have saved its crew 14 years later, in 1951 flies green flags on the point of First 24, the Grand Canyon, at Caliente, Calif. Stan Kistler On December 22, 1965, I was the engineer on Santa Fe Railway Los Angeles–San Diego train 76, one of the […]

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Chessie 8272 comes home NEWSWIRE

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Chessie System-painted C&O No. 8272 poses in Building 10 at GE Transportation’s Lawrence Park, Pa., shops for a reunion picture with GE workers who were on site when the B30-7 locomotive was built — in 1980. Greg McDonnell LAWRENCE PARK, Pa. — It wasn’t supposed to happen. When the CSX shop in Huntingdon, W. Va., […]

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Boarding the cars at Guthrie

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Louisville & Nashville E8 No. 787 leads the head-end cars and lone coach of Evansville–St. Louis train 10 out of East St. Louis in May 1968.  R. R. Wallin, George W. Hamlin coll. “No, that train doesn’t stop here. You’ll have to go up to ‘Hoptown’ to get it,” was the less-than-helpful information from the […]

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Growing up along the Burlington

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An E unit leads a train through Berwyn, Ill., on a lazy day in August 1963. Such scenes were part of daily life along the Burlington’s triple-track main west of Chicago. Larry Kostka It didn’t matter how often you rode the trains, or even if you did at all. Growing up in the postwar era […]

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W. A. Eby, PRR engineman and foster dad

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Like many old steam men, PRR engineman W. A. Eby disliked diesels, but he manages a smile in the cab of S12 No. 8734 working the Bellefonte local in 1957. Michael Hauk collection I never knew Walter A. Eby, my dad’s foster father. He passed away in 1963, when I was two years old. I […]

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