Chessie System painted B30-7 emerges from CSX shops in West Virginia NEWSWIRE

DJI_02972

Freshly painted C&O GE B30-7 No. 8272 sits outside of CSX’s paint booth in Huntington, W.Va., on Saturday, March 18. Chase Gunnoe HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — A locomotive repainted into Chessie System colors has emerged from CSX Transportation’s Huntington locomotive shops. The B30-7, C&O No. 8272, formerly CSX No. 5554, was spotted outside of the facility’s […]

Read More…

Chariots of fire on the Erie

HotmetalERIE

A hot-metal “bottle car,” one of three in an Erie train that included eight hopper cars as spacers, passes DeForest Junction, between Youngstown and Warren, Ohio, in 1966. Clifford A. Redanz One of the more interesting aspects of steel-mill railroading were the “hot-metal runs” that moved molten iron from the blast furnaces to the open […]

Read More…

Close encounters of the 4-6-4 kind

THB501

Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo’s two ex-NYC J-1e’s were among the Hudsons that captivated a Buffalo boy in the late 1940s. Frank Clodfelter While growing up in Cleveland and Buffalo after World War II, a close encounter with a Hudson-type locomotive was just a train ride away. My first memory was as a four-year-old. My family […]

Read More…

Burlington ‘Zephyr’ record

TRNAT0215_02

The Burlington ‘Zephyr’ as seen in Aurora, Ill., on May 26, 1934. Its nonstop run may have included slow spots. CB&Q Q In 1934, the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy ran the Zephyr from Denver to Chicago nonstop. How did they do this without changing crews? Did they have crews on-board for each subdivision and change […]

Read More…

Whose cab ride is this?

erieRS2hoboken

Erie RS2 904 clatters into the Lackawanna’s Hoboken Terminal with a Main Line local in 1956. Richard H. Young Youth is wasted on young people, so the saying goes. Kids don’t have the … well … maturity to know what’s special in their world. Watch the crowds at Disneyland. It’s the adults who are agog […]

Read More…

The time I got to run ‘my unit’

CTRTW0909_51

On June 15, 1972 — six years before author Olson’s ride on it — Illinois Central Gulf SD40 6000 pulls into Markham Yard at Homewood, Ill., with GP40 3011. J. David Ingles I have always had a thing for “class units,” that is, the first in a series, and “my engine” is Illinois Central 6000, […]

Read More…