When you think of engine facilities on the BNSF Ry., images of large, multi-bay structures; wash racks; and sand towers and fuel columns that can handle 10 or more locomotives at a time probably come to mind. And that makes perfect senses considering the railroad’s size. BNSF has facilities like this in Alliance (Neb. and […]
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Overland Route A trim Southern Pacific 4-6-2 makes better than 60 mph with Overland Limited east of Elko, Nev., in 1918, when Overland Route rail service was already nearly 50 years old, and the top trains were numbered 1 and 2. Fred Jukes photo […]
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Shasta Daylight The Oakland-bound Shasta Daylight rumbles over the big, curved trestle at Redding, Calif., in mid-1950. The Shasta was diesel-powered from its July 1949 launch. James L. Martin photo […]
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Follow along as Cody Grivno, Model Railroader group technical editor, takes a closer look at a Jacksonville Terminal Co. National Steel Car 53-foot 17 post-well car! […]
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Railroad man Gainesville Midland Railroad conductor L. C. Birchfield is perched in a caboose cupola in the late 1950s. The railroad ran between Gainesville and Athens in northern Georgia and one time had a branch to Monroe. Seaboard Air Line purchased the road in June 1959. Philip R. Hastings photo […]
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Want to model modern mainline action with one engine and two cars? Don’t worry – there’s a prototype for everything! On June 19th, 2021, Lindsay Korst photographed BNSF 6800, a General Electric ES44C4, hurrying westbound near Harrington, Wash. with an empty centerbeam flatcar (probably for added braking power) and a Boeing Aircraft parts car. How […]
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Rolling fortress With two big engines leading a dozen heavyweight cars into the desert, the Southern Pacific’s Sunset Limited looks like a rolling fortress at Palm Springs, Calif., sometime in the mid-1940s. Walter H. Thrall Jr. photo […]
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Keeping an even keel It was important for boxcar loads of grain to be level. Sometimes workers had to enter the cars and level the loads by hand, as with this carload of wheat. Jeff Wilson collection […]
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See Atlas’s General Electric Dash 8-40B in Santa Fe colors in operation on Model Railroader’s Wisconsin & Southern staff layout! […]
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Cab-forward conveyance A puff of oil smoke hangs in the air over Truckee as AC 4-8-8-2 No. 4185 gets the westbound Overland moving after a station stop. In 6 hours, the train will arrive at Oakland Pier. Jim Morley photo […]
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Independent Locomotive Service (ILSX) and KBN Inc. became co-owners of my hometown railroad, the Minnesota Northern (MNN), in August 2000. Since taking over the short line from RailAmerica, the railroad’s fleet of MNN-painted and lettered diesels has been supplemented with assorted lease units from ILSX. Everything from Electro-Motive Division (EMD) SW1s to SD40T-2s have been […]
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