Classic Trains

Winter gives us time to reflect and ponder. This winter, I find my thoughts focusing on what comes next — who are the next readers of Classic Trains and where do they come from? For me, that’s an existential question. There is no shortage of enthusiasm for trains from the younger generation. (No, that doesn’t include me anymore.) I see them out photographing steam excursions each year. I see them flocking to the last of their kind signals: position lights, searchlights, and semaphores. And I see their photos on Instagram. But I don’t know how enthusiasm for the 261 or searchlights translates into an interest in the Milwaukee Road. I went to Colorado in 2015 for Trains’ 75th anniversary tours and came back a stronger fan of the state, and especially its narrow…

WE MISS… The caboose hop. In the classic era, interchange was handled delivery-only, with power and caboose coming back unladen. Strangers in the snow Santa Fe’s El Capitan rolls west on the Burlington Northern’s triple-track “Racetrack” at Downers Grove, Ill., on Jan. 29, 1971. The detour is on account of a derailment west of Joliet the previous day. Presumably, the train will return to home rails at Galesburg. No business like snow business Canadian National tested its “Snow Fighter” in the winter of 1980-81 at Montreal’s Taschereau Yard. According to the railroad’s press release, the machine is a “1,000-hp yard switch engine equipped with adjustable plow-type blades and wings on one end and a two-stage blower/loader on the other end, all controlled from the cab.” When enough snow is accumulated, it will be loaded in…

Cortland Jct. introduction? I wonder if I ever met author David Marcham on one of his vacation relief assignments at Cortland Junction. If I did, a belated thank you for tolerating a young boy who loved trains. I grew up in Cortland, N.Y. When I received my first bike with its mobility, the two railroad yards were the first choice of adventure. I discovered Cortland Junction where the Lehigh Valley and Lackawanna crossed. Many summer afternoons I would ascend the steps and spend an afternoon pestering the operator with questions. If it was David, or any other operator, they were exceptionally tolerant and fostered my lifelong enthusiasm for railroading. Some memories never fade! John R. Iacovino, Wallace, N.C. I happened to be in Athens in September 2022 as a Lehigh Railway train arrives into Norfolk Southern’s…

Although I’ve never been great with a camera, I’ve enjoyed a life immersed in railroad photography, thanks to my good fortune at being able to edit railroad magazines for much of the past 40 years. I’ve had my favorites, of course, but I’ve tried to be as neutral as possible when it came to photographers. Serving the story or the topic comes first, choosing who gets the credit line is second. That’s the goal, anyway. But it hasn’t always worked out that way. When you spend a career sifting through tens of thousands of 8x10 black-and-white prints and 35mm color slides, you start looking for that one approach — that certain signature — that not only makes your life as an editor easier but also means “great photograph.” Quite often that…

It was a black-and-white world when I had my first encounter with the Gulf, Mobile & Ohio. It was a Saturday in 1963. I was 14 and, yup, I had already (and unwittingly) entered what eventually would be a career wrapped around railroad photography and writing. My older sister, Maureene, was chaperoning my railfan buddy Parry Donze, his kid brother Mike, and me on a train trip into Chicago for a day of shopping in the Loop. We were aboard Illinois Central train 12, the Sioux City-Chicago Hawkeye, which we had boarded at our hometown of Rockford, Ill., at dawn for the 105-minute ride into Chicago. Those last 45 minutes into Central Station were of special interest to Parry and me, what with all the fascinating junctions our train negotiated. At one…

1 NYC 5344: AS BUILT Hudson 5344 poses for a broadside builder’s photo at American Locomotive Co.’s Schenectady plant in November 1931. She was the last-built member of the J-1e subclass, and one of only two J-1 engines with roller bearings on her driving axles. The streamlining of railroad equipment was still three years in the future. 2 1934 STREAMLINING In February 1934, the same month Union Pacific’s M-10000 motor train introduced streamlining to American railroading, NYC Equipment Engineering Department staffer Carl F. Kantola designed a cowling for one of his road’s J-1 4-6-4s. That November, NYC’s newest Hudson, No. 5344, happened to be in West Albany Shops, and was selected to receive Kantola’s treatment. The result was America’s first streamlined steam locomotive. Though it bore the name Commodore Vanderbilt, the engine displayed…