With engineer Steiner at the throttle of Nickel Plate Road 893, fireman Jennings shows photographer Lewis the coal scoop, which Lewis often wielded aboard the old 2-8-0. Hal Lewis In 1949, on the Nickel Plate Road’s Peoria Division, a daily eastbound local freight, operated as Second 68, ran from Peoria to Frankfort, Ind. Its power […]
A Reading I-8sb 2-8-0, standard freight power on the road’s Wilmington & Northern branch, is a long way from that bucolic line as it heads a local freight at Newtown Junction in Philadelphia on November 22, 1947. Leslie R. Ross When I was a teenager, some 60 years ago, I spent much time exploring, watching, […]
Looking not unlike Miss Hazen’s train 719, an unidentified Bay Head local rockets out of South Amboy behind Pennsy K4 5428 circa 1940. Frank Quin Life can be funny sometimes. The first railroad tracks I ever saw were those of the New York & Long Branch at Manasquan, N.J., in the mid-1930’s. But I don’t […]
Author Hartley finally caught up with the elusive New Haven FA’s in Boston. Allan G. Hartley The New Haven Railroad was the perfect pike for a young railroad enthusiast. Station agents and block operators always would take the time to talk and tell me about what would be arriving next. Train crews were professional, yet […]
On a hot summer night in the early 1960s, Rock Island E3 626 stands at Waterloo, Iowa, with train 190. Ahead 110 miles: Columbus Junction. J. David Ingles Sad to say, this story is true. Only the name of the guilty is omitted. Sad to say, I knew this man—and still do now. It happened […]
To our family, the ultimate train was not the Broadway, the 20th Century, or the exalted Dominion that plied our home Canadian Pacific rails out of Toronto. For us, the train was CPR’s nameless workaday No. 25, leaving daily at 10:30 (reading as 9:30 in the days when timetables were printed in Standard Time regardless […]
Southern Pacific 2-10-2 3757 rests at Sparks, Nev., in 1948. J. F. Larison I went firing on the Southern Pacific’s Coast Division in 1953. My engineer’s name was Lindsay, a hoghead in the regular San Francisco-Watsonville Junction (Calif.) chain gang. I fired for Lindsay several times and, although he never checked the water level by […]
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In 1942, for a boy seeking brand-new road power, old Reading Camelback 0-6-0 1323 was nothing special—but would that we could ride her today! George Gillespie Younger readers must wonder why we old-timers gloat over some picture taken during our youth. It’s the sentimental attachment and memories of a wonderful period, of course. My father […]
On a hot afternoon in August 1960, the year before the author began his Erie employment there, five Alco cab units thundered past SN Tower with a 99 freight. J. David Ingles In 1961 my dream came true. For the past six months or so I had been hanging out at various towers on the […]
Bruceton was a busy junction in west Tennessee on the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway. One engineer who worked out of there was known for his pompous, stuffed-shirt manner and lordly bearing which often grated upon others. Drawing a hotshot run out of Bruceton, this engineer put his 2-8-2 to serious work and was […]
Way back in 1940, I took a fling at railroading. After ditching art school, I went to work for the Alton Railroad at its roundhouse at Glenn Yard in southwest Chicago. My job was mechanic’s helper. One of my duties was to tighten the bolts on locomotive cylinder heads. I attacked the task with vim […]
