Five mind-blowing Chessie facts

Etching of sleeping kitten

Mind-blowing Chessie facts Mind-blowing Chessie facts: What began as a simple etching of a sleeping kitten, blossomed into one of America’s most-loved corporate symbols. This is the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway’s Chessie Cat. Trains collectionAmerican businesses have fostered a plethora of advertising characters attempting to endear us to their products and entice us to purchase […]

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How railroads standardized time in the US

three men comparing time

Standardized time in the US Long before radios and extensive signaling systems, railroads safely operated multiple trains on the same line. Supplied with timetables showing the schedules of all regular trains and precisely worded written orders from the dispatcher, crews ran with a complete understanding of where and when they would meet other trains and […]

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Yard Dog from Nebraska’s Chicago & North Western Railway yard

dog on picket line

Yard Dog In mid-September 2022, the first nationwide railroad strike in three decades was narrowly averted thanks to a tentative deal between Class I railroads and three labor unions. The news brought to mind a labor dispute more than 30 years ago — and an unusual picket line. In the 1980s, railroaders in Norfolk, Nebraska’s […]

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‘Friar Tuck’ and the East Broad Top

Smiling gray-haired man in tan hooded sweatshirt

ROBERTSDALE, Pa. – “Little more, little more . . . Mush, you huskies! Ho!” With that chant, Gene Tucker urged his four-man volunteer crew at the narrow gauge East Broad Top Railroad to squeeze a 60-pound rail into alignment just enough to slip a J-shaped “hook bar” into place to force the track gauge back […]

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News Photo: NJ Transit’s ‘Bluebird’ diesel

Two GP40 locomotives in heritage paint schemes

KEARNY, N.J. — NJ Transit has unveiled its newest heritage locomotive, GP40PH-2 No. 4101, repainted into the “Bluebird” paint scheme used by New Jersey Department of Transportation’s Commuter Operating Agency, a predecessor of the current transit agency. The locomotive is one of 13 3,000-hp EMD GP40P units specifically designed for the Central Railroad of New […]

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Bangor & Aroostook Railroad remembered

Blue, red, and white Bangor & Aroostook Railroad horizontal striped boxcar

Northern Maine’s Bangor & Aroostook Railroad was a relative latecomer to the American railroad map, being organized under the General Laws of Maine on Feb. 13, 1891. There had been earlier efforts, but this one succeeded in linking northern Maine to the central Maine city of Bangor and the country’s rail network. First was the […]

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Greatest Moments in Model Railroading

Model train scene with vehicle and scale figure

Greatest Moments Greatest Moments Note: This speech was written by Andy Sperandeo and presented to the South Texas Division/San Antonio Model Railroad Association NMRA’s convention on June 23, 2006. We discovered these documents during some office clean up recently, and thought our readers would enjoy reading them. Good evening everyone. I’m very glad to be […]

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Five mind-blowing East Broad Top Railroad facts

narrow-gauge steam locomotive on a turntable

Mind-blowing East Broad Top facts Tucked deep in the Allegheny Mountains, between Altoona and Harrisburg, is Rockhill, Pa. Today, Rockhill is home to a railroad time capsule called the East Broad Top Railroad, arguably one of the more famous and best-preserved U.S. narrow gauge lines. Built between 1872 and 1874, the EBT mostly lugged coal […]

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