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Rolling fortress With two big engines leading a dozen heavyweight cars into the desert, the Southern Pacific’s Sunset Limited looks like a rolling fortress at Palm Springs, Calif., sometime in the mid-1940s. Walter H. Thrall Jr. photo […]
Keeping an even keel It was important for boxcar loads of grain to be level. Sometimes workers had to enter the cars and level the loads by hand, as with this carload of wheat. Jeff Wilson collection […]
Cab-forward conveyance A puff of oil smoke hangs in the air over Truckee as AC 4-8-8-2 No. 4185 gets the westbound Overland moving after a station stop. In 6 hours, the train will arrive at Oakland Pier. Jim Morley photo […]
Shortline savior North Carolina’s Laurinburg & Southern was a GE 70-tonner bastion in the Southeast. A pair works Dixie Guano in Laurinburg in September 1984. The GE small locomotive line enabled great savings for short lines that adopted them, keeping some of them running for years longer than if powered by steam. Jim Wrinn photo […]
Man at work Baltimore & Ohio Dispatcher Carl Donald makes an entry on his trainsheet in DR Tower in Deshler, Ohio, in the early 1950s. Deshler lies at the crossing of the B&O’s Pittsburgh to Chicago and Toledo to Cincinnati main lines. Wallace W. Abbey photo […]
First of two parts ABOARD THE SOUTHWEST CHIEF — A month after Amtrak revamped dining-car menus on the five long-distance trains that serve the West Coast — replacing pre-packaged meals in a bowl with freshly-prepared breakfasts, lunches, and dinners — it’s clear the company is aiming for a higher standard than what it previously offered. […]
Ice reefer innovation Attaching a portable precooling motor (right) with a belt to the shaft extension on the generator enabled the ice-cooled car’s own fans to precool a load while standing still. This helped keep ice-cooled cars cold when loading. Preco photo […]
M-10001 In the late 1930s, the Union Pacific’s streamliner M-10001 is serviced between runs in Chicago; although dirty, the streamliner stands out from older steel and wood cars in the yard. Alexander Maxwell photo […]
The railroad industry’s chickens have come home to roost. Before he retired in 2019, BNSF Railway Executive Chairman Matt Rose warned that the other Class I railroads were inviting regulatory risk by adopting Precision Scheduled Railroading, reducing service, and demarketing some types of traffic in pursuit of higher profits. “We have this common-carrier obligation to […]
Getting grain to market A truck dumps its load of wheat through the floor grate into the bin at an elevator in Fowlerville, Mich., in 1950. The framework in the background is for elevating wagons and trucks that don’t dump on their own. The town is located on the Chesapeake & Ohio’s Pere Marquette main […]
Great Lakes outpost Chesapeake & Ohio SW9 No. 5251 idles by the carferry City of Midland 41 in Milwaukee in 1978. The C&O’s Milwaukee trackage was reached only by the carferries across Lake Michigan. Brian Buchanan photo […]
Dominion Oil-fired Canadian Pacific G3 4-6-2 Pacific 2388 awaits departure from Vancouver with the Dominion on a June 1952 evening; the Mountaineer left an hour earlier. John C. Illman photo […]
