Baltimore & Ohio No. 9 is one of four class C-16 0-4-0T switchers built in 1912 to work tight-radius street trackage along Baltimore harbor. Two were rebuilt as tender engines in the 1920s, but the other two worked as-built until several years after World War II. Their compact size made them a favorite among HO […]
Since 2023, 22-year-old Nick Harding has been an active part of the engine crew for the Norfolk & Western J-class 4-8-4 No. 611. The work involves much more than just having smoke rise from the cowled stack. It demands round-the-clock maintenance and repair between operations, ensuring the locomotive is ready for its next trips out […]
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — The Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum announced that former Southern Railway No. 4501 will return from its annual inspection wearing the railroad’s classic passenger green paint scheme. The locomotive will appear as it did when it entered excursion service 60 years ago, in 1966. “In a year when we’re celebrating [the museum’s] 65th […]
Consolidation 2836 steams across a country road at Junction, Ill., with the every-other-day freight between Flora and Shawneetown in September 1954. Philip R. Hastings photo […]
The 2-6-6-2T Mallet, exemplified by Weyerhauser No. 9, was perhaps the ultimate development of the logging locomotive. Compact, powerful, and flexible, the type was ideally suited to pulling heavy loads over rough, sharply curved track. Geared locomotives like the Shay also possessed these traits, but could not make the speed of a rod engine. Baldwin […]
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 […]
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Union Pacific’s Big Boy will return to California this spring in the first leg of its planned coast-to-coast trip for America’s 250th anniversary, the railroad has announced. The first segment of the trip will be a round trip from Cheyenne, Wyo., beginning March 29 and concluding April 24, with two major public […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
