Terry Friend and Minnie Tate pose with Norfolk & Western Train 42 in a spoof of a famous 1875 advertising poster. O.Winston Link N&W K1 4-8-2 104 is serviced at Bristol, Va. O. Winston Link Master photographer O. Winston Link attained critical acclaim in the fine-art world for his striking nighttime views of the last […]
Visitors gather in the main gallery of the new O. Winston Link Museum during its grand opening ceremony on January 10, 2004. Robert S. McGonigal In Roanoke, Va., an estimated 1000 people attended grand opening ceremonies for the O. Winston Link Museum on Saturday, January 10, 2004. The museum, located in the former Norfolk & […]
Big Boy 4012 starts down the west side of Sherman Hill in June 1949. Cars of livestock are coupled right behind the tender. Richard H. Kindig Richard H. Kindig is best known for his magnificent views of steam locomotives laboring in the mountain passes of the West in the 1930s and 1940s. With his trademark […]
Photography and train travel are twin passions of Richard Jay Solomon, who was given his own 35mm camera for his 10th birthday. In the 1950s and 1960s, Solomon began capturing the last of steam on roads like the Pennsylvania and Norfolk & Western, and he took equal delight in photographing the Northeast’s colorful streetcar, transit, […]
From his home turf in Michigan and the Upper Midwest, Robert A. Hadley documented the transition from steam to diesel on American railroads. While Hadley often used conventional angles in his photographs, unlike other photographers he would step back and take in more of the scene, using generous foregrounds and backgrounds to demonstrate that the […]
A Union Pacific 2-10-2 helps a four-unit Alco FA diesel roll a westbound freight up Cajon Pass near Victorville, Calif., in October 1950. Stan Kistler Stan Kistler is a well-known professional photographer and photofinisher in Grass Valley, Calif. Kistler began photographing trains in the early 1940s when he was growing up in Pasadena, documenting the […]
Northern Pacific 4-8-4 No. 2662 storms up the 1.8 percent grade at Muir, Mont., in 1947. Few people know the railroads of Montana like Warren McGee, who has been photographing them since 1930. McGee’s favorite subject is the Northern Pacific, the railroad that also employed him for 35 years as a brakeman and conductor, based […]
The world of short-line railroading had a master storyteller in the form of William S. Young. A skilled and perceptive photographer, as well as a prolific editor and publisher, Young has spent a considerable part of his life covering the small side of railroading. Young began taking railroad photographs in 1941 at age 12; three […]
East Broad Top 2-8-2 No. 12 pulls into Orbisonia station for another load of riders on Oct. 14, 1960, during the narrow-gauge’s reopening weekend. Don Wood photo June 24, 1951 Last of seven chartered railfan trips, dating to 1936, operates on EBT. Jan. 1, 1952 C. Roy Wilburn, who eventually would lead the railroad’s day-to-day […]
It was on March 5, 1850, that the Kentucky legislature approved a charter for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company. The first through train operated between L&N’s namesake end points in 1859. Had it not been for dynamic leadership, vision, money, and some luck, the L&N might not have matured beyond this original route and […]
In 1920, when American railroads emerged from 26 months of government control, the prevailing philosophy of freight-train operation was to hang as many cars as possible behind a locomotive and send it out to drag its way along the line. Three locomotive types were ideal for drag freight: 2-10-2, 2-6-6-2, and 2-8-8-2. The 2-10-2 and […]
Herron Rail Video archive In his The Unwanted Berkshires in the Spring 2004 issue of Classic Trains magazine, Jack Polaritz looks at the genesis and careers of Pittsburgh & Lake Erie 9401-9407, the last 2-8-4 design in America. After P&LE dieselized, the engines were stored, then reactivated in 1955 when another New York Central subsidiary, […]
