In April 1948, a Rock Island 4-6-2 with an inbound commuter train approaches Englewood Union Station on Chicago’s South Side as the Peoria Rocket accelerates toward its namesake city. Bob Borcherding photo […]
Rock Island steam and stainless steel
Tag: Photos and Videos
Katy freight house in Houston
Freight terminals had extensive docks for trucks on the nonrail side of the structure. This is the Missouri-Kansas-Texas freight station in Houston, Texas, in the 1940s. LeRoy Wilkie photo […]
Black NYC E7 diesels
New York Central 4003 and a sister E7A wear the road’s short-lived black road-diesel livery as they stand at La Salle Street Station, Chicago, ready to depart with the 20th Century Limited, August 1946. John E. Wenzel photo […]
Meet on the C&IM
Chicago & Illinois Midland 2-8-2 550 waits in the siding at Atterbury, Ill., with northbound way freight as the caboose of an empty coal train passes on the main in September 1954. Philip R. Hastings photo […]
Seaboard caboose crew
The conductor and flagman aboard a Seaboard Air Line caboose work on their paperwork as their train rolls through the night sometime in the early 1950s. Classic Trains coll. […]
Standard and narrow gauge in Maine
The two-foot-gauge Bridgton & Harrison (former Bridgton & Saco River) interchanged passengers and freight with the Maine Central in Bridgton Junction, Maine. Compared with a high-mounted MEC 2-8-0, diminutive B&H No. 5 could be confused with an amusement park engine. Dwight A. Smith Jr. photo […]
Cody’s Trackside Finds: A potpourri of motive power
My daily commute to our former Kalmbach Media offices at 21027 Crossroads Circle in Waukesha, Wis., conveniently crossed the Union Pacific, Canadian National, and Canadian Pacific. Most days I didn’t encounter a train. If I did, I was usually stuck too far back in the cue of traffic to get any meaningful photos. But the […]
Train of Tomorrow Pullman compartment
Two models pose in a compartment in Dream Cloud, the sleeping car in the 1947 Train of Tomorrow demonstration streamliner, a joint project of General Motors and Pullman-Standard. GM photo […]
Great Northern ‘Mountain’-series observation car
Appekunny Mountain was one of six deep-windowed observation-lounge cars built by ACF for Great Northern’s “Mid-Century Empire Builder.” Wallace W. Abbey photo […]
Little engine in a big land
This little 0-4-2T worked in building the Alaska Railroad, then went on to serve two logging operations along the line. Library of Congress photo […]
Consolidation vs. cow on the Virginia Blue Ridge
A crewman on Virginia Blue Ridge 2-8-0 No. 6 (ex-Southern 385) coaxes a cow off the track at Tye River, Va., in July 1954. Today this engine is at the Whippany (N.J.) Railway Museum. H. Reid photo […]
Moffat Tunnel car washers
The Rio Grande equipped both ends of the Moffat Tunnel with high-pressure car-washing sprayers to clean windows in preparation for the splendid views ahead. This is a view out the east portal in 1949. W. H. Mitchell photo […]
