I REMARKED OVER dinner one night “Driving a train is really hard work!” I waited for the guffaws to die down before I explained that while I hadn’t actually controlled a real train, Microsoft’s Train Simulator had put me in the virtual engineer’s seat. Microsoft’s Train Simulator is the closest thing to being in a […]
Sample page from Field Guide to Modern Diesel Locomotives. Sample page from Field Guide to Modern Diesel Locomotives. Greg McDonnell’s Field Guide to Modern Diesel Locomotives, from the publishers of TRAINS Magazine, picks up where Louis Marre’s Diesel Locomotives: The First 50 Years (Kalmbach 1995) leaves off. McDonnell includes histories and spotting features of Electro-Motive […]
Seaboard’s coach-only mail train, No. 5, at Hamlet, N.C., behind E7 3041 and SDP35 1113. J. David Ingles It’s 300 miles from Knoxville, Tenn., to Raleigh, N.C., as the crow flies. But Classic Trains senior editor J. David Ingles parlayed a round trip between the two cities to 1039 miles on a spring weekend in […]
In June 1949, my friend Bob Wagner and I decided to head from our Los Angels-area homes for the Owens Valley in eastern central California to see, and hopefully ride, Southern Pacific’s former Carson & Colorado narrow gauge, which still operated with steam power 70 miles between Keeler and Laws. We got a late start […]
The gift By Curtis L.Katz I have always been fascinated with trains. My kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Bannister, a grandmotherly woman wiry and wise, once told my mother that most little children go through a phase when they are interested in trains or ships or trucks, “but with Curtis, trains are a hobby.” Had my 5-yeard-old […]
When I read Rev. Richard Anderson’s account in the Summer 2000 Classic Trains [pages 93-95] of his travels on the Rock Island, I was filled with nostalgia. His description of boarding the woebegone Cherokee at 2:45 a.m. at Little Rock got me thinking back to my own experiences with the Rock Island in the Arkansas […]
In the Fall 2001 issue of Classic Trains magazine, Senior Editor Dave Ingles recounts his train trip to and from Denver in May 1967. His detailed notes of train consists and time-keeping of arrivals and departures are presented here. May 11, 1967 IC #21, Green Diamond, Springfield, Ill.-St. LouisIC 4023 E8AIC 4109 E9B CofG 812 […]
Merger? What merger? Two tariffs equal one trip By J. David Ingles As railroad mergers were sweeping the land through the 1960’s, passenger services of individual carriers were on a one-way trip to oblivion, culminating in Amtrak’s formation in 1971. For most roads, this couldn’t happen soon enough, and this attitude, couple with the regulatory […]
As an Episcopal priest serving in Iowa in the 1960’s, I was lucky to have Gordon V. Smith as my bishop. Bishop Smith was always eager to do whatever he could to make life easier and happier for us clergy who were in his jurisdiction. He was fascinated with my interest in railroads, and was […]
For many years, the Lehigh Valley maintained some offices in downtown Philadelphia, even though this was an off-line point. In the mid-1940’s, the Valley relocated the offices to its building just west of the Bethlehem (Pa.) Union Station. The LV cushioned the hardship of the move by having a special chartered train run each working […]
Many years ago, when the Atlantic Coast Line was almost all double track from Richmond to Jacksonville and the passenger-train speed limit was 100 mph, a calamity nearly occurred in an obscure south Georgia swamp. ACL’s raceway occasionally would narrow to single track when encountering a drawbridge over a river, or a wide marsh associated […]
One of the most memorable aspects of my career in railroad maintenance of way is the “outfit.” An outfit was usually a collection of old revenue cars — both passenger and freight — converted to sleeping, cooking, shower, supply, tool, storage, and machinery transport use. An outfit could be one lone car for a signal […]
