SHIPPENSBURG, Pa. — The Conrail Historical Society’s museum and archive center, housed in a retired 86-foot hi-cube auto parts boxcar, opened to the public with ceremonies on Saturday, April 1. The facility, located along the Cumberland Valley Rail Trail, is a collaboration of the society with the rail trail, Shippensburg University, Cumberland Area Economic Development […]
CHICAGO — The Historic Pullman Foundation will celebrate its 50th anniversary at its annual Rail Car Reception, set this year for Thursday, May 18, aboard three historic Pullman cars on the Track One platform at Chicago Union Station. The reception will be held from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The event is a prelude to the […]
Duluth & Northeastern 2-8-0 No. 16, pictured without her smokebox door inside the short line’s enginehouse in September 1954, went into a river in 1916, was caught in a wildfire in 1918, and was inside the old enginehouse when it burned down in 1952. Philip R. Hastings photo […]
Still in use more than 180 years after they were built, the Keystone Arch Bridges of western Massachusetts stand as enduring monuments to the skill of their creators. An economic crisis Boston had a problem in the late 1830s. The newly completed Erie Canal was drawing more and more trade to the ports of New […]
The Nickel Plate Road’s major components were all in place by 1949. The Nickel Plate, formally the New York, Chicago & St. Louis Railway, was conceived in 1881 as a Buffalo-Chicago project to compete with the parallel Lake Shore & Michigan Southern (later New York Central) of William H. Vanderbilt. To thwart rival […]
Amtrak E60 locomotives are an important bridge for Northeast Corridor electric railroading between the GG1s of the 1930s and 1940s to the AEM-7 and HHP-8 locomotives of the 1980s and early 2000s. E60 locomotive history General Electric developed the E60 C-C or six-axle locomotives at its Erie, Pa., plant in the early 1970s. The […]
The Fairbanks-Morse H12-44TS locomotive was a familiar-looking unit with different internals. FM was a fierce competitor in the early days of dieselization, perhaps remembered most for its H24-66 Train Master, a six-axle 2,400 hp road-switcher that impressed almost every railroad it demonstrated on. Among its lesser-known successes were three specialized units produced […]
Kansas City Southern Shay locomotives were oddballs on a steam locomotive roster of non-conformity. Ephraim Shay came up with the design for the geared locomotive in the 1870s. The Lima Locomotive Works popularized the design and sold almost 2,770 copies. Throughout the Leonor F. Loree administration, Kansas City Southern was a loyal Alco […]
Kansas City Southern locomotives were full of surprises in both the steam and diesel fleets. Steam locomotives saw a gradual evolution, from 2-8-0 to articulated 0-6-6-0s (an oddball in the industry for road service) and 2-8-8-0s and eventually the much-vaunted 2-10-4s of 1937. The 0-6-6-0s were the largest group of the type built […]
Canadian National U-class 4-8-4 locomotives proved to be the most versatile of the type operated in North America. It’s generally accepted that the ultimate in steam power was the 4-8-4 Northern type, if defined by criteria that includes speed, power, technology, and, perhaps most importantly, versatility. A lot of railroads capped off the steam […]
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — The City of Cheyenne has accepted a donation from Union Pacific of three passenger cars and a caboose for the city’s planned 15th Street Railroad Experience tourism project, the Wyoming Tribune Eagle reports. Two of the cars — a former Southern Pacific heavyweight observation car later used in maintenance-of-way service and a […]
On a day when snow is flying back home in Milwaukee, I’m 900 miles away, luxuriating in 70-degree temperatures and enjoying the refreshing shade of the huge live oak that hugs the generous eaves encircling one of the South’s most distinctive train stations. The building is a replica, but don’t hold that against it. […]
