E units belonging to Louisville & Nashville, Chesapeake & Ohio, New York Central, and Pennsylvania idle on the ready tracks near the Cincinnati Union Terminal roundhouse in September 1952. Baltimore & Ohio, CUT, Norfolk & Western, and C&O steam engines populate the whisker tracks in the background. Wallace W. Abbey photo […]
Louisville & Nashville 4-6-2 No 295 stands at Winchester, Ky., with local train 3 for Hazard on May 3, 1952. Built in 1925 with three cylinders, the Pacific lost its middle cylinder and gained a big tender and some decorative sheet metal in 1940 to pull the Louisville–Montgomery, Ala., leg of the Chicago–Miami South Wind streamliner. Ed […]
Pennsylvania Railroad 5711 was one of 121 class G5s 4-6-0s the road’s Juniata Shops in Altoona, Pa., built in the 1920s. Designed for commuter and secondary passenger work, 90 of the heavy Ten-Wheelers worked on PRR’s own lines, while 31 were for subsidiary Long Island Rail Road. Harold K. Vollrath photo […]
Rio Grande 2-8-8-2 3601 exits Deen Tunnel east of Pando, Colo., with an eastbound freight extra in March 1946. On the valley floor beyond is the Army’s 10th Mountain Division’s Camp Hale. R. H. Kindig photo […]
At Altamont, Calif., summit of the Western Pacific’s climb over the hills between San Francisco Bay and the Central Valley, Mikado 308 waits in a siding with an eastbound freight in the late 1940s or early ’50s. Arthur Lloyd photo […]
Wabash Railroad 2-6-0 576 eases its train across the Illinois River at Meredosia, Ill., in September 1954. The branch between Bluffs, Ill., and Keokuk, Ia., was the last stand of Wabash steam, as the 1899-vintage F4 Moguls were the heaviest power permitted across it. Philip R. Hastings photo […]
Two passengers on Southern Pacific’s Coast Daylight watch with fascination as a 2-10-2 helper and 4-8-4 road engine lift their train up Cuesta Grade out of San Luis Obispo in about 1949. Linn H. Westcott photo […]
New York Central box-cab locomotive 548 rides the turntable at the 72nd Street engine house on the west side of Manhattan. A highway was constructed above the facility in the 1930s. NYC photo […]
In October 1950, a Chesapeake & Ohio 0-8-0 moves sleeping car Surprise Valley through the interlocking at 21st Street, Chicago. The car arrived at Grand Central Station on Baltimore & Ohio’s Capitol Limited from Washington in the morning and departed from Dearborn Station on Santa Fe’s Chief to Los Angeles later in the day. Wallace […]
If it’s December, it must be time to put on a crackling fire, pour a hot chocolate, and explore some snowy model railroad scenes compiled from the pages of Model Railroader. If you’d like to see last year’s gallery of snowy model railroad scenes, follow this link. […]
The Milwaukee Road’s station at Canton in the southeast corner of South Dakota is bustling with activity as cars off the Midwest Hiawatha from Chicago are switched into the Sioux Falls section of the Sioux. The year is about 1944; note the sign on the depot: “Canteen. Service men and wives only.” Henry J. McCord […]
A switchman signals a South Omaha Terminal Railway switcher as the diesel adds cars onto the meat train transfer at the Terminal yard on a darkening October evening in 1957. The cars will soon become part of Illinois Central’s hot CC-6 Council Bluffs–Chicago perishable train. William D. Middleton photo […]
