America’s newest roundhouse

Former regional railroad owner Jerry Joe Jacobson built a private, 18-stall roundhouse he calls the “Age of Steam” in Sugarcreek, Ohio, to house his collection of a dozen locomotives. The complex includes a boiler wash track, offices, a backshop, machine shop, store house, water tank, and water column. Enjoy this short video, and be sure […]

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Seeing time move

FULL SCREEN Ellen Skye The Union Pacific Railroad in southern Nevada circa the late 1990s/early 2000s. FULL SCREEN Ellen Skye The Union Pacific Railroad in southern Nevada circa the late 1990s/early 2000s. FULL SCREEN Ellen Skye The Union Pacific Railroad in southern Nevada circa the late 1990s/early 2000s. FULL SCREEN Ellen Skye The Union Pacific […]

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Watch Talgo build high speed trains

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Talgo trains under construction in Milwaukee. Matt Van Hattem Go behind the scenes and watch America’s newest passenger trains come to life in the January 2013 issue of Trains magazine. We spent two years visiting Talgo’s plant in Milwaukee, documenting the assembly of the new Series 8 trainsets, which will enter revenue service on the […]

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‘Penny pictures’ of the Sandy River

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Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes 2-foot-gauge Mogul No. 16 pokes out of the covered depot at Kingfield, Maine. Charlie French, Mallory Hope Ferrell coll. While still a teenager in the early 1950s, I corresponded with a man who had grown up on the 2-foot-gauge lines of Maine. Arthur French, by then elderly, collected Indian Head […]

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Finis for Philo

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A 1962 freight derailment spelled the end for the century-old Wabash depot at little Philo, Ill. Glen Brewer My clock-radio came on at the usual morning hour with the local news. The date was Wednesday, October 3, 1962. The announcer reported a train wreck in Philo, Ill., the previous evening, blocking the Wabash Railroad’s main […]

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Intermodal crane at work

Ever wonder how the UPS and FedEx Ground packages you ship travel across the country? They go by train. And in the December 2012 issue of Trains magazine, we take you inside one of the top railroad intermodal yards for FedEx and UPS Ground shipments: BNSF Railway’s Willow Springs terminal outside Chicago. We spent 24 hours inside […]

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The doctor’s appointment

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Horseshoe Curve, 1940: Freight on track 1, passenger on track 2, smoke from a train climbing on track 3 or 4. H. W. Pontin You could not avoid liking my uncle, Matthew McGrail. Matt was a medical doctor in Bradford, Pa., by profession, but he was a full-time rail enthusiast. He befriended many crews of […]

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More than a touch of class

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The Santa Fe was a class act, from its Warbonnet diesels to how it dealt with derailments. Gordon Glattenberg Back in 1955, when I was 22, I gained my first post-college newspaper reporting job with the Avalanche-Journal in Lubbock, Texas—not exactly the center of the railroad universe. Little did I know that within a few […]

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