Airborne Challenger

Union Pacific Railroad 4-6-6-4 Challenger wheels

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 […]

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Classic railroad scene in central Ohio

20180105

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 […]

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Clinchfield 4-6-6-4 pusher

20180108

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 […]

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News Wire Top 10, No. 4: East Broad Top’s revival continues

Steam locomotive on turntable

ROCKHILL FURNACE, Pa. — The narrow gauge East Broad Top Railroad plans to celebrate 2022 as another milestone – the 150th anniversary of the start of construction in 1872 — with more track restoration and a return to steam-locomotive operation. If 2020 was the year of a miraculous rebirth for the historic south-central Pennsylvania line, […]

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Chicago Great Western Railway locomotives

Red and black diesel locomotives parked on curve

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 […]

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Biggest in Canada

20180109

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. […]

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Future of 2-4-0 displayed in Georgia in limbo

Small steam locomotive in park

McDONOUGH, Ga. – The future of a 1934 H.K. Porter 2-4-0 steam locomotive on display at a local park 30 miles south of Atlanta is up in the air, according to its owners, the elected Board of Commissioners of Georgia’s Henry County. Wearing No. 7, the engine, acquired in 2003, has been displayed at the […]

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Meet the Modeler: Peter Atonna

A scene on Peter Atonna’s layout

    Hi-rail O gauge modeler Peter Atonna’s work last graced the cover of Classic Toy Trains in October 2017, but his relationship with the magazine goes back at least two layouts to the May 1997 issue. His current one, the detail-packed Seligman & Paulden Lines, showcases the best of long passenger and freight trains […]

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New Sherman Hill line conquers gravity for Union Pacific

The new Sherman Hill line in 1953 was Union Pacific’s latest improvement over the massive undertaking of building and maintaining a transcontinental railroad begun about 90 years earlier. Since the first surveyors ventured into the uplands west of Cheyenne in 1865, the Union Pacific has been waging intermittent war against the geography of southeastern Wyoming. […]

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