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 […]
Tag: History
Baltimore & Ohio timeline
Baltimore & Ohio timeline: 1827 Charter approved 1828 Official start of construction on July 4 1830 Scheduled service begins, Baltimore-Ellicotts Mills, May 24 1831 Service begins to Frederick, Md. 1832 Service begins to Point of Rocks, Md. 1835 Service begins on Relay-Washington branch, construction having begun in 1833 1837 Potomac River bridged at Harper’s Ferry, […]
The history of Baltimore & Ohio’s Shepherd Branch
Returning to Benning Yard, CSX local B701 makes its way slowly north on the historic Shepherd Industrial Track, near Anacostia Park in Washington, D.C. Mike Schaller The Baltimore & Ohio was the first railroad to serve Washington, D.C., completing a branch from its main line at Relay, Md., in August 1835. To reach markets south […]
Ready to serve the nation
Here’s a variation on a familiar World War II theme, the diverse geographical backgrounds of men serving together in the armed forces. It comes to us in the form of some faded sheet music dedicated to the Military Railway Service. The rousing anthem “Railroaders Always” is of interest in its own right, but the cover […]
Close Call for the Scout
I hired out in 1944 with the Santa Fe as an agent/operator apprentice and in August was assigned to the agent/operator pool. In about a year I was 26th up from the bottom of the list, so I was able to successfully bid on some openings. One night in about 1946, I was working relief […]
Live Steam on the Loose
During my career as an engineman on the Southern Pacific, I ran and fired locomotives carrying from 185 to 300 psi of superheated steam. The engine in this story was a 3700-class 2-10-2 which carried 200 psi of steam at 510 degrees F. Every road locomotive had two water glasses, one on the engineer’s side […]
My Summer at ‘Tac Harbor’
The year was 1966; I was 19 years old and starting my second summer working on the Great Lakes. This year I was called to be a deckhand on the Leon Falk Jr. of the Hanna fleet. At 730 feet overall, she was one of the largest boats on the Great Lakes, and could haul […]
Welch: Santa Fe’s Arizona Outpost
Before a 1960 line-relocation project, the two main tracks of the Santa Fe Railway’s transcontinental main line split at Supai, a few miles west of Williams, Ariz. The westbound track followed a more circuitous route, enabling trains to more easily climb the steep Supai hill. Twelve miles west of Williams the tracks met again, at […]
Selling the service
In the days before airlines and interstates began siphoning off rail freight and passenger business – and big railroads merged to form today’s even bigger mega-systems – virtually every large city and town was served by multiple railroads. Shippers had their choice of carriers to move goods between Points A and B. Passengers, too, had […]
Railroad electrification proposals
At the end of the 1930s, the United States stood as the world leader in railroad electrification. With 2400 route-miles and more than 6300 track-miles under electric power – far more than any other country – U.S. electrification represented more than 20 percent of the world total. Electricity was harnessed for a variety of railroad […]
Legendary railroaders
JOHN W. BARRIGER III One of the most peripatetic chief executives in railroading-he led Monon, P&LE, Katy, and Boston & Maine-was also one of the most sagacious. “J.W.B.’s” vision of the Super Railroad was the template for every Class 1 of the 1990’s. RALPH BUDD Scholar as well as railroader, Budd ran Great Northern and […]
E Unit for Sale: $1
At age 4, I looked forward to 2 p.m. That was the hour my grandfather would return to our house on Wicome Avenue in Newport News, Va., for his afternoon break, followed by our daily trip to trackside. Shortly after Granddaddy’s cup of coffee, we would drive in his white fin-tailed Cadillac over to the […]
