Trains offers something for everyone who has a spark for railroading: Railroad news, insight, and commentary on today’s freight railroads, passenger service, transit, locomotives, technology, preservation, fan opportunities, and more. You’ll also see images and read stories from railroading’s glorious past, and explore the bright future of railroading. It’s all in the pages of Trains magazine.
Features
Who Shot the Passenger Train?
How Railroads Work: Freight Scheduling
See how railroaders in the service design department find ways to route trains across a giant system
How Railroads Work: Dispatching
How Railroads Work: Ticketing
Find out how railroads sold coach seats and berths to thousands of travelers a day, in an age before computers, cell phones, or Travelocity
How Railroads Work: Power
How Railroads Work: Hump Yards
A monstrous operation stretches to the horizon as cars weave their way from one end to the other. All in the name of ‘feeding the Beast.’
Bonus Content: Download a free PDF of a two-part article from 1966 about The Belt Railway Company of Chicago
Bonus Content: Watch a video of cars going over BRC’s hump
How Railroads Work: Amtrak Scheduling
The challenge of coming up with realistic timekeeping combines art, science — and negotiation
How Railroads Work: Signaling
Bonus Content: Learn more about signals in a free PDF of two articles from 1957
In My Own Words: Loving a Dangerous Job
NEWS
News & Photos
- Railroads face tough PTC deadline
- BNSF puts big bucks into bridge projects in Illinois and Iowa
- Famed Pinkerton tunnel sees the light in Pennsylvania, thanks to CSX
Don Phillips
Federal regulators say the magic words: ‘reciprocal switching’
Fred W. Frailey
Locomotive
Union Pacific and Electro-Motive Diesel test an exhaust gas recirculation locomotive in California
Technology
GE Transportation is first out of the gate with a Tier 4 prototype locomotive
Passenger
DEPARTMENTS
From the Editor
We answer your No. 1 question with a 50-page, behind-the-scenes look at railroads
Ask Trains
• What does ‘Plate C’ mean?
• CSX’s ‘one gallon of fuel’ claim
• Odd new diamond in Indiana
Preservation
Nickel Plate Road 2-8-4 No. 765 is put to the test at the famous Horseshoe Curve near Altoona, Pa.
We are accepting proposals for our $10,000 preservation award now
Trackside
Watch freight, passenger, and light rail amid the Wasatch Range in Salt Lake City
Don’t forget to enter our 2012 photo contest for ‘the blue hour’
