Chicago & Eastern Illinois locomotives served the road well through many decades of operation. C&EI was a coal-hauling railroad and, other than some early switchers, stuck with steam through World War II. Three E7s and a bunch of F3s made quick work of dieselizing the line from 1946 onward, with the last steam […]
Amtrak GP40 diesel locomotives came in two flavors: eight former GO Transit GP40TCs acquired in October 1988 and 15 straight GP40s leased between May 1991 and June 1993. The 3,000 hp GP40 is a standard bearer of freight motive power in the second half of the 20th century. Introduced by EMD in 1968, the model […]
Walking out the 15th Street side entrance to Detroit’s Michigan Central Station last Friday morning, I found myself channeling the great baseball play-by-play man Jack Buck. “I can’t believe what I just saw!” Buck’s epic quote came, of course, when Dodger Kirk Gibson launched his epic home run off A’s reliever Dennis Eckersley in game […]
My first regular assignment as a brakeman on the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad in 1977 was one that no one else wanted. In accordance with my union’s working agreement, when a job could not be filled voluntarily, the most junior employee was “forced” to work it. The morning after being notified by the crew clerk, […]
The Budd Co. and Chicago, Burlington & Quincy went hand in hand in building the streamlined Zephyr fleet, though the Midwestern railroad wasn’t the only customer to the car manufacturer. By 1941, the company produced nearly 500 stainless-steel passenger cars to more than a dozen railroads. The 1939 Silver Meteor and 1941 Empire State Express […]
DETROIT — The magnificent indoor space at Michigan Central Station that once hosted New York Central passenger trains has been brought back to life in spectacular fashion by the Ford Motor Company. It joins New York’s Grand Central Terminal, union stations in Washington and Chicago, and Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal as well-preserved classics built […]
SILVIS, Ill. — Union Pacific DDA40X Centennial diesel No. 6936 will be on display at a free “Summer of Safety” open house at the Railroading Heritage of Midwest America shops in Silvis, Ill., later this month, while a concurrent event, the “Walk Amongst the Giants Fundraiser,” will offer a chance to view the two UP […]
DETROIT — The city of Detroit has seen its share of comebacks over the past 20 years, but nothing quite like what is happening this week as it celebrates the grand opening of the renovated Michigan Central Station, the beneficiary of hundreds of millions of dollars in investment by its new owner, Ford Motor Co. […]
ROCKHILL FURNACE, Pa. – Already powering past its current-year fund-raising goal, the volunteer Friends of the East Broad Top group has hit another milestone, announcing this week that since the historic East Broad Top Railroad was reopened in 2020, the group has raised $1 million in donations. The 33-mile-long narrow gauge EBT, a National Historic […]
THOMASTON, Conn. — The Railroad Museum of New England’s Naugatuck Railroad will formally unveil the museum’s restored Russell snow plow during its Connecticut Open House Day this Saturday (June 8). The plow was refurbished after being damaged by vandals last May. The plow, Maine Central No. 70, was built by the Russell Snow Plow Co. […]
Union Pacific steam locomotive Every operating steam locomotive you see: Union Pacific No. 4014, Canadian Pacific No. 2816, NKP No. 756, Reading & Northern No. 2102, and many others all have one thing in common. They are always clean. It does not matter how large or small they are, how old they are, or what […]
Here today, gone tomorrow A lack of diversity in locomotive models — and paint schemes — tends to give many of us a sense of complacency. Why go out of the way to watch and perhaps photograph trains that have always been there and seemingly always will? Except, as we have found out in the […]
