Chasing the elusive Black Marias

Photos of Alco’s mid-1940’s Black Maria freight diesels are extremely scarce. Obviously one factor was the short time the units operated. When Jerry A. Pinkepank and Kalmbach Publishing Co. issued the first Diesel Spotter’s Guide in 1967, no photos of the units had come to light, so on page Alco-49, below the technical description of […]

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GG1 engineer’s controls

Built by the Pennsylvania Railroad between 1934 and 1943, the GG1 electric locomotive was the backbone of the busy New York-Washington and Philadelphia-Harrisburg corridors for decades. In the Summer 2009 issue of Classic Trains magazine, we celebrate the 75th anniversary of this great locomotive design with 35 pages of special features. Step inside a GG1 […]

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GG1 roster

Built by the Pennsylvania Railroad between 1934 and 1943, the GG1 electric locomotive was the backbone of the busy New York-Washington and Philadelphia-Harrisburg corridors for decades. In the Summer 2009 issue of Classic Trains magazine, we celebrate the 75th anniversary of this great locomotive design with 35 pages of special features. View a roster listing […]

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Railroad story of the month: February 2009

A supplement to the Classic Trains Online Look Back e-mail newsletter Outfits I have known By Michael J. McLaughlin One of the most memorable aspects of my career in railroad maintenance of way is the “outfit.” An outfit was usually a collection of old revenue cars–both passenger and freight–converted to sleeping, cooking, shower, supply, tool, […]

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Online Bonus: “The case of the elusive C-Liners”

The Spring 2005 issue of Classic Trains includes two stories regarding Fairbanks-Morse’s C-Line diesels: “A new dress for opposed pistons” (page 52) and “Why to C-Line fell on its face” (page 56). As an online bonus, we’ve scanned an article from the July 1972 issue of TRAINS magazine called “The case of the elusive C-Liners”. […]

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The General

Pennsylvania Railroad’s coast-to-coast air-rail service, run jointly with the Santa Fe and Trancontinental Air Transport, was championed by PRR president Gen. William Wallace Atterbury. (A promotional video clip of that service is available on our site. See the link at the bottom of this story.) The Winter 2003 issue of Classic Trains magazine takes an […]

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