One model manufacturer is “gearing” customers up for a new HO Scale Shay steam locomotive to come to market in 2022. United Kingdom-based KR Models Ltd. released product sample pictures and a test-run video recently which show the company’s version of the classic logging locomotive moving forward and reversing on YouTube. According to an advertisement […]
All through October, Classic Trains editors are celebrating the gritty, coal-hauling, Pennsylvania-based Reading Company railroad. Please enjoy this photo gallery of Reading freight trains selected from the image archives of Kalmbach Media‘s David P. Morgan Library. Reading Company, as a railroad, disappeared into Conrail more than 40 years ago. But it is still possible to […]
The November 2021 issue of Classic Toy Trains features a Lionel collection that contains such gems as the no. 2296W Canadian Pacific outfit and some of the finest examples of the rarest sets in the postwar era. You’ll also visit an O gauge homage to the Reading Lines in Pennsylvania, and an S gauge layout […]
Grain, the old-fashioned way Through the end of the 1800s, a lot of grain was shipped in 100-pound sacks. Here, workers load grain sacks into wood boxcars in Minneapolis around 1900. Minneapolis Public Library collection […]
Overland Route A trim Southern Pacific 4-6-2 makes better than 60 mph with Overland Limited east of Elko, Nev., in 1918, when Overland Route rail service was already nearly 50 years old, and the top trains were numbered 1 and 2. Fred Jukes photo […]
Union Pacific, which has long put profitability ahead of volume growth, has turned over a new leaf. UP now says it is focused on gaining traffic – and that it will grow faster than the rate of industrial production over the next three years by diverting freight from highway to rail. UP’s emphasis on […]
Dubuque depot In 1916, the Illinois Central’s Dubuque, Iowa, freight house had three tracks, including one that passed through the building. Photo by Illinois Central […]
In the only known photo of legendary engineer John Luther “Casey” Jones at the throttle of a locomotive, Jones and fireman J. W. McKinnie are ready to take Illinois Central 2-8-0 638 out for a break-in run after a shopping at Water Valley in summer 1898. Less than two years later, Jones perished in a […]
History of the Baldwin classification system The Baldwin classification system originated in 1842, when Asa Whitney was a partner of M.W. Baldwin and continued in use until 1938. The system was based on use of a letter to designate the number of pairs of driving wheels on a steam locomotive. The letter A designated a […]
The Pennsylvania Railroad is famed for its GG1 electric locomotives, but casual observers might be surprised to learn how extensive Pennsy’s electric operations were. After a tentative start with a limited D.C. third-rail system in the early 1900s, the PRR built an A.C. catenary empire between 1915 and 1938 — and fielded an impressive array […]
It’s before sunrise on April 12, 1863, at the Atlanta Car Shed, and Western & Atlantic 4-4-0 locomotive The General is steaming up for its 4 a.m. run to Chattanooga, Tenn. While the crew eats breakfast at the Lacy Hotel, about 20 Union soldiers disguised as civilians will commandeer the train, leading to the events […]
Modeling a narrow gauge railroad in a small space: Modeling a logging camp requires a variety of structures, trackwork, scenery, figures, and activities. The camp includes not only loggers involved in different pursuits, but also woodchoppers, a laundress, checkers players, engineers and mechanics, stable hands and horses, bears, garbage cans, railroad materials, and more, surrounded […]
