The 2026 contest theme is: The Unexpected Trains Magazine and the National Railway Historical Society are teaming up again to present the 2026 photo contest. This year’s theme: The Unexpected. A railroad photography adventure is much like a day fishing — you never know what you’re going to catch. You were expecting a pair of […]
Rock Island class R-67 Northern 5114 has just passed Joliet (Ill.) Union Station and crossed the GM&O/ATSF diamond as it steams toward Chicago with an eastbound freight in fall 1951. Wallace W. Abbey photo […]
Characteristic of the indignities suffered by steam in its final years, Reading G-3 Pacific 215, built in 1948 as a top-flight passenger engine, loafs along with a single coach on the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines in September 1955. Philip R. Hastings photo […]
Mikados, an 0-8-0, and an ex-Pennsylvania Railroad Consolidation are arrayed around the turntable at Detroit, Toledo & Ironton’s Flat Rock Yard near Detroit on the day before Labor Day, 1955. Philip R. Hastings photo […]
As a crossing watchman stands guard, Reading Camelback 4-6-0 No. 608 brings a Newtown, Pa.–Philadelphia local into Fox Chase station in 1948. Leslie R. Ross photo […]
A worker shovels salt into a reefer via a rolling chute at the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy’s icing dock in Denver in 1949. The conveyor chain on the platform at right carries block ice along the platform. Earl Cochran photo […]
An interior view at Tower 19 near Dallas (Texas) Union Terminal shows the track diagram (“model board”) of the territory controlled by the tower and some of the levers that controlled the switches and signals. This is an electro-pneumatic interlocking, in which switches are operated by compressed air. Historic American Engineering Record photo […]
With the general speed-up of passenger train schedules in the 1920s, the need arose for a more powerful version of the 4-8-2. Although it had adequate adhesion, the 4-8-2 lacked the raw horsepower to accelerate a heavy train coming out of a sag or after rounding a curve. Lima Locomotive Works had shown the world […]
New York Central E8 diesels idle at La Salle Street Station, Chicago, awaiting departure with two sections of the 20th Century Limited in November 1953. Robert W. Carper photo […]
A long string of stock cars is tucked in behind Santa Fe 2-8-2 No. 4085 on train 44, the Perishable Express, near Henrietta, Mo., in 1946. Behind the stock cars are 33 refrigerator cars. Robert R. Malinoski photo […]
This is a typical standpipe (also called water crane, water column, or water plug) used to fill steam locomotive tenders with water, which is supplied by pipe from a tank. A single tank might supply several standpipes. When not in use, they were swung away from the track. The bucket-like object between the end of […]
In the 1890s, the Gotthard Railway in Switzerland operated the first Mallet locomotives. They were compound articulated locomotives developed by, and named for, Swiss engineer Anatole Mallet. A Mallet locomotive has two engines, which are independently mounted on an articulated frame. A high-pressure engine is located at the rear. Steam exhausted from it is conveyed […]
