SALT LAKE CITY — The Arizona Spike, one of four created for ceremonies marking the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869, sold for $2.22 million in an auction that concluded last week, far more than had been anticipated. KSL-TV reports Christie’s had set a pre-auction estimate of $300,000 to $500,000 for the spike, with […]
Builder’s plate Imagine walking around all of your life with your birth certificate attached to your forehead. Anyone could walk up to you and in one glance (assuming they understood your birth certificate’s cryptic codes) ascertain your age, lineage, weight, maybe how many legs you should have, and possibly how much work you can do. […]
A group of rail non-profit organizations in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut are joining forces to restore to operation three GE 44-ton diesels, all produced in the mid-1940s. The locomotives — Middletown & New Jersey Railroad No. 2; Hoboken Manufacturers Railroad No. 7; and New Haven Railroad No. 0814 — are currently owned by […]
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 […]
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 […]
A late afternoon photo from 1951 at Central Station, Illinois Central’s main terminal in Chicago, finds three trains ready to depart. From left: IC’s Panama Limited to New Orleans, New York Central’s Twilight Limited to Detroit, and IC’s Seminole to Jacksonville, Fla. Part of the Seminole’s run was on the Central of Georgia, which assigned […]
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 […]
HAMILTON, Ohio — The second part of the railroad station in Hamilton, Ohio, made its move today (Tuesday, Jan. 17), with the one-story portion of the structure making the 1,100-foot trip down Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to join the two-story building moved in December [see “News photos: Hamilton, Ohio, station on the move,” Trains […]
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, […]
Dirt the railroad cat Within a few hours of announcing Dirt’s death to the public in a Facebook post on January 11, 2023, Nevada Northern Railway Museum’s page flooded with thousands of people posting their condolences and sharing their fondest memories and pictures of Dirt. From a small stray kitten found in the enginehouse to […]
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 […]
BOONTON, N.J. — The United Railroad Historical Society of New Jersey has scheduled 48 departures for its Hudson River Rail Excursions between February and November, including the addition of special trips tied to Valentine’s Day and the 75th anniversary of the 1948 edition of the 20th Century Limited. The 48 trips is double the 2022 […]
