50 years ago this month: May 1959

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50 years ago in railroad history … A supplement to the Classic Trains Online Look Back e-mail newsletter Chesapeake & Ohio on May 7 launches mail and express service between Grand Rapids and Petoskey, Mich., using Railvans – a predecessor of today’s RoadRailer railcar/semitrailer hybrids. . . . Chicago & North Western, seeking to modernize […]

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50 years ago in railroad history: April 1959

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50 years ago in railroad history … A supplement to the Classic Trains Online Look Back e-mail newsletter TRAINS magazine devotes its April 1959 issue to an investigation titled “Who Shot the Passenger Train?” The landmark issue examines the (mostly unhealthy) state of the rail passenger business and proposes solutions. . . . [All feature […]

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Video series: add an industrial district to your model railroad

Start watching this project model railroad video series 4 weeks to a bigger layout: Benchwork 4 weeks to a bigger layout: Roadbed and track 4 weeks to a bigger layout: Scenery 4 weeks to a bigger layout:Ballast 4 weeks to a bigger layout: Structures 4 weeks to a bigger layout: Operations […]

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50 years ago in railroad history: March 1959

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50 years ago in railroad history … A supplement to the Classic Trains Online Look Back e-mail newsletter The U.S. Supreme Court on March 2 upholds a lower court’s ruling not to interfere in the discontinuance of New York Central’s Weehawken-Cortland Street Hudson River ferries, paving the way for their last runs on March 24; […]

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Video Extra: Action at Englewood Union Station

In the Spring 2009 issue of Classic Trains, Hal Lewis presents photos from his “Spring Break” trip to Chicago in 1950. One of his stops was Englewood Union Station, where trains of the Pennsy, NYC, Rock Island, and Nickel Plate mingled. Here, from the Herron Rail Video [www.herronrail.com] program “Glory Machines, Vol. 3,” are some […]

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A look back in time: January 1959

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50 years ago in railroad history … A supplement to the Classic Trains Online Look Back e-mail newsletter Pullman car Ferdinand Magellan, modified to haul the President of the United States in 1942 and in POTUS ever since, is donated to the Florida Development Commission for display at the University of Miami; it later moved […]

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A Window in Thrums

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A window in Thrums By Steven Duff Thrums is a name that somehow resonates above most others, a name, as we say these days, that has Attitude. It is a Scottish word, immortalized in Sir James Barrie’s novel, A Window in Thrums, and is perpetuated in Canada by a small town in British Columbia. In […]

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Quick and easy Flextrack

topper tape flextrack

Instead of using spikes or contact cement, Model Railroader contributor Chuck Hitchcock shows you how to use DAP adhesive caulk and topper tape (a material used to insulate pickup truck caps) to lay track. Quick and easy Flextrack […]

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A look back in time: November 1958

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Rock Island buys GM’s two Aerotrains for suburban service out of Chicago, where they join RI’s own Jet Rocket Talgo train, powered by an Aerotrain-style locomotive. . . . Illinois Central buys eight sleeping cars (four 10-5’s, four 4-4-2’s) from New York Central for City of Miami service. . . . Pullman-Standard’s first 85-foot flatcar […]

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