Here are five traits of the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton that made it special. The DT&I was formed in 1905 with the combination of the Detroit Southern and Ohio Southern railroads. In 1920, automobile tycoon Henry Ford acquired the road, popularly to ensure a new River Rouge bridge could be built to ensure water […]
Please enjoy this photo gallery of Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis passenger trains, originally published online in November 2017. […]
Although the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway employed several nicknames — “Dixie Line,” “Nashville Road,” and “Lookout Mountain Route” among them — to former employees and their families, it will always be “Grandpa’s Road.” James A. Skelton was one of those Grandpas. He was 14 in April 1862, and although the War Between the […]
If you’re reading this, you’re undoubtedly aware of what’s been going on with Kalmbach Media, and how it has sold most of its magazine titles, including Trains and Classic Trains, to Chattanooga-based Firecrown Media. Concurrently, Kalmbach has decided to liquidate over the next couple of months, bringing an end to approximately 90 years of continuous […]
The GE 70-ton diesel locomotive was a consistent seller for the international conglomerate. In North American railroad circles, General Electric was originally known primarily as a builder of large road locomotives. In the diesel market, starting with the groundbreaking 2,500 hp U25B road-switcher in the 1960s, railroads gobbled up its four- and six-axle […]
Incorporated in 1899, when the name of western Pennsylvania’s biggest city was spelled without an “h,” the Pittsburg, Shawmut & Northern ran from Brockway, Pa., to Wayland and Hornell, N.Y. Heavy construction debt forced it into receivership in 1905, and it was abandoned in 1947. Just before the end, 2-8-0 No. 71 leads a freight south […]
Chicago & Eastern Illinois locomotives served the road well through many decades of operation. C&EI was a coal-hauling railroad and, other than some early switchers, stuck with steam through World War II. Three E7s and a bunch of F3s made quick work of dieselizing the line from 1946 onward, with the last steam […]
Walking out the 15th Street side entrance to Detroit’s Michigan Central Station last Friday morning, I found myself channeling the great baseball play-by-play man Jack Buck. “I can’t believe what I just saw!” Buck’s epic quote came, of course, when Dodger Kirk Gibson launched his epic home run off A’s reliever Dennis Eckersley in game […]
Chicago & Eastern Illinois passenger trains: All through June 2024, Classic Trains editors are celebrating the history and heritage of “The Chicago Line.” Please enjoy this photo gallery of Chicago & Eastern Illinois passenger trains, originally published online in 2015. […]
Like many other railfans back in the mid-1960s, I was shooting using black & white negative film essentially on an exclusive basis. Reasons for this included budget (color slide film and processing were more expensive than monochrome), camera quality issues (it turned out that my Argus C-3 could do a reasonably good job with […]
Chicago & Eastern Illinois history was special to those to watched the railroad firsthand. In the pantheon of great railroad names, “Chicago” was so often the magic word. Think of all the carriers with Chicago on their letterhead, railroads with thousands of miles on their system maps, railroads whose names imply vast, continental […]
In the late 1930s and early 1940s the venerable Lehigh Valley streamlined several of its named passenger trains. This is the John Wilkes, decked in Cornell red, near Glen Onoko, Pa., in 1939. Wayne Brumbaugh photo […]
