Professor Roger Carp discusses the origin and evolution of the vintage Lionel Trains motor-driven coal conveyor accessory. CTT Editor Hal Miller also chimes in with operating insights and helpful tips. Learn even more about this unsung classic in the May 2021 issue of Classic Toy Trains magazine. […]
Norfolk & Western K2 4-8-2 117, just in from Lynchburg with the Tennessean, is prepared for its next assignment in the lubritorium service building at Shaffers Crossing terminal outside Roanoke, Va., in 1954. A. Akin Jr. […]
With the real thing in the background, New York Central President Alfred Perlman accepts a model of an RS11 from Alco Products Vice President W. A. Callison in June 1957. NYC bought nine of the 1,800 h.p. road-switchers. Alco […]
Rio Grande Alco PA 6013 revs up out of Littleton, Colo., with the Denver-bound Royal Gorge on May 18, 1967. David Ingles […]
Workers at the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal enginehouse prepare Louisville & Nashville FP7 651 and a GP7 to go out on the Piedmont Limited/Gulf Wind in 1954. James G. La Vake […]
A 70-car Denver & Rio Grande Western narrow-gauge freight train drops down famous Tanglefoot Curve, just east of Cumbres, Colo., in June 1960. Since 1960, Cumbres & Toltec tourist trains have plied this landmark. Robert F. Collins […]
Great Northern launched its Red River pocket streamliner between Grand Forks, N.Dak., and St. Paul in June 1950, part of the road’s big postwar push for passengers. The coach seats featured a wheat motif on their upholstery. Great Northern […]
By the early 1960s, railroads began reclaiming auto traffic from highway trucks with long two- and three-level auto racks on flatcars. Here, new Thunderbirds and other Fords are loaded aboard a Western Pacific tri-level car built by ACF. American Car & Foundry […]
The flood of Powder River Basin coal that became so important to successor Burlington Northern began modestly on NP, with a 1969 contract to move coal from Colstrip, Mont., to Cohasset, Minn. In July 1969, a Cohasset-bound train pauses in Mandan, N.D. Duane Durr collection […]
A Railway Express Agency truck, along with a cart with milk cans, transfers express into a messenger car, while in the background, mail bags are loaded and unloaded from an RPO car along the Monon in 1948. Photo by Linn Westcott […]
Sixty-odd years ago, I was a youth living in Palmyra, Wis., where my father, Ben Eller Sr., was the station agent for the Milwaukee Road. Palmyra, 42 miles west of Milwaukee, was on the Madison Division, the original line to the state capital via Milton and Janesville. When I was 12, I got braces on […]
Lionel porthole caboose origins Lionel’s designers and marketers took significant steps in 1953 to expand and upgrade its roster of O gauge rolling stock. They introduced near-scale freight cars, notably larger and more realistic boxcars and a flatcar. They brought out for the first time a triple-dome tank car. And they distinguished the line with […]
