Former L&N freight depot to be auctioned in Kentucky

Three-quarters view of two-story brick building

HOPKINSVILLE, Ky. — A former freight station built by the Louisville & Nashville Railroad in 1905 will be sold at public auction on Friday by a public agency that no longer needs the brick structure for storage. The Hoptown Chronicle reports the building is owned by the Hopkinsville Water Environment Authority, which has owned it […]

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SP’s gambit to abandon its commuter trains

Exterior of diesel locomotive in passenger station

  Of all the railroads that tried various gambits to get out of the passenger business in the 1960s, perhaps none attracted as much vitriol as Southern Pacific. Not that SP downgraded or got rid of the most trains — that honor probably goes to New York Central — but its 1966 substitution of an […]

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The Milwaukee Road Hiawatha passenger trains

Color three-quarter-angle photo of streamlined steam locomotive with passenger train

Milwaukee Road Hiawatha passenger trains are the long-lasting legacy of a Midwestern railroad plagued with underperformance and mismanagement — right up until its merger with the much smaller Soo Line in 1986. Rather than recount the bad times, join us for a look back at the Hiawatha trains over the years. Only from Trains.com. Twin […]

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Al Kalmbach captures train time at Calera, Ala.

Passengers wait to board a passenger train on canopied platform

  Some photographs grab your imagination and won’t let go.   Case in point: this simple but quietly affecting portrait of what I’m guessing are some teenage girls giving two friends a sendoff as they board Louisville & Nashville train No. 3 on the platform of the joint L&N and Southern Railway station in Calera, […]

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Reading switcher shoves frozen Doodlebug

Black and white image of Doodlebug with fringed edge.

It could have been a Trains News Wire headline: “Reading switcher shoves frozen Doodlebug.” You won’t believe the story. I awoke and gazed out the window of my home in Coatesville, Pa., to see a veritable torrent of fluffy snowflakes falling. They were burying the landscape of my hometown in a wonderland of whiteness. The […]

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Minnesota city builds “railroad depot” water pump station

mock train station building

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. – It’s been decades since the last Chicago & North Western freight train rumbled through Eden Prairie on former Minneapolis & St. Louis tracks, and even longer since the M&StL depot stood along the right-of-way. Yet if you look along that right-of-way today, there’s a new “station” – a replica of a […]

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Cool railroadiana, a dandy depot, and train repair parts on Bob’s Train Box 86

Bob Keller and Hal Miller discuss train repair parts

This episode, host Bob Keller shows an old New York Central coal service directory. It was a book the railroad gave to customers and those that needed to know the details of its lines in the Appalachians that served mines and loadouts. Then The host shows off a resin depot that looks at home on […]

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North Shore passenger service photo gallery

Streamlined Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee equipment under catenary

Enjoy this North Shore passenger service photo gallery selected from among the Chicago, North Shore & Milwaukee Railroad files in Kalmbach Media‘s David P. Moran Library. This gallery celebrates the history, heritage, and Electro-glamour that was the high-speed North Shore interurban railroad. This North Shore passenger service photo gallery was first published in August 2015. […]

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Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee remembered

Streamlined electric passenger train crossing railroad tracks at grade during Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee history

Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee history is tied to the transit needs of Chicago and Milwaukee. In 1891 the Waukegan & North Shore Rapid Transit Co. was incorporated — a trolley line for the city of Waukegan, Ill., on the shore of Lake Michigan, 36 miles north of Chicago. In 1897, by which time it […]

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