Classic Trains Summer 2020

On pages 68–71 of this issue, Frank Tatnall recalls the day in November 1957 when he and a friend witnessed the final run of the last active member of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s great fleet of K4s Pacifics. It was quite a come-down for onetime steam royalty. After 43 years and 425 locomotives, all-Pullman limiteds and grand terminals, it all ended with No. 5351 bringing a humble three-car commuter train into Camden, N.J. Time had not been kind to the 33-year-old engine’s appearance, either, thanks to infrequent cleanings and front-end modifications that had spoiled her good looks. But what drew Frank trackside that day was not just the demoted, disfigured 5351, but also the legacy of the K4 class as a whole. America’s largest family of 4-6-2s had once commanded the top…

WE MISS … Looking out the front of streetcars. Rail transit systems are proliferating, but most of their cars have full-width cabs. J. David Ingles East Broad Top saved! On February 14, decades of uncertainty were resolved with the announcement that Pennsylvania’s East Broad Top had been acquired by the new EBT Foundation, which intends to resume operations on the storied narrow-gauge line. Although the purchase does not include the northerly 5 miles of track into Mount Union, where 2-8-2 No. 18 prepared to depart with the morning train one day in 1950, the arrangement secures the future of a national treasure. Al Chione collection Big stock move New York Central’s livestock business increased by one big head in fall 1958 with the movement of part of an outdoor display to Boston. The unusual load…

Reference to Tom Gildersleeve’s photo in “Colorful Classic” [page 72] of Santa Fe F7 40L on the Fast Mail in 1963. This unit would be renumbered in 1971 to 315L and leased to Amtrak for Texas Chief service. In August 1972, Santa Fe painted the 315L in the road’s yellow Warbonnet paint scheme. “Yellowbonnet” 315L served in Amtrak Texas Chief service into July 1973. Santa Fe adopted the Yellowbonnet scheme on June 14, 1972, the result of an FRA visibility-audibility study conducted during 1970–72. The recommendation to the Santa Fe was to “put more yellow up front.” ATSF 315L would finish its career in freight service until retired in March 1974 and remanufactured to CF7 2517 in June 1974. — Ralph Back, Eagan, Minn. Required reading? Let me offer congratulations for what I…

With apologies to Martha Reeves, summer’s here and the time is right … for steam locomotives. Or at least I hope so. As this issue of Classic Trains goes to press, it’s difficult to predict how many steam operations will be firing up this summer, but I’m hopeful there will be plenty. A season without any steam? Unthinkable. The prospect of summer reminds me of the first steam engine I ever encountered up close, and it wasn’t a Berkshire or a Northern. No, it was a redoubtable little 0-6-0, the first operating steam locomotive at that bellwether of all tourist lines, the Strasburg Rail Road. If memory serves, my first inkling of Strasburg No. 31 came in a book I became obsessed with in 1963, Ron Ziel’s The Twilight of Steam Locomotives.…

In 1957 my mother gave me a copy of Lucius Beebe and Charles Clegg’s The Age of Steam. I was a 14-year-old high school student who had been interested in railroads since early childhood. The Age of Steam was my first railroad book. I slept with it under my pillow, and memorized some of Beebe’s more stirring passages. The Age of Steam opened my eyes to the tremendous variety of railroading in North America away from my New York home. My next railroad book was Narrow Gauge in the Rockies, also by Beebe and Clegg. It contained many images of the Denver & Rio Grande Western slim-gauge operations by well-known railroad photographers such as Fred Jukes, R. H. Kindig, Otto Perry, Robert Hale, Jim Shaughnessy, and many others. Looking at these…

Years ago, the next best thing to riding a train was enjoying a snowy evening curled up in front of the fire with a copy of The Official Guide of the Railways. A certain magic took hold as the reader trolled through the railroads, names of trains, their destinations, and the array of equipment and accommodations offered to passengers. The phone-book-thick tome was loaded with timetables which were weighed down by a host of footnotes and symbols attached to station names and train times. Special among these symbols were the ones that designated a flag stop or other indication suggesting the train usually didn’t stop at that station. Imagine: the train would normally streak past the station, but if you satisfied the restrictions and wanted to board or detrain there, it…