Last, highest standard gauge steam in US (current issue CT)

[SD70M-2Dude]

Trinity River Bottoms Boomer

What about oil burners?

From personal experience, black.  Very, very black.  Exactly like used engine oil from your car...

Unless of course you're on one of the operators who burns straight diesel fuel.  Might be red then if you spill some.

[Anonymous]

What about oil burners?

[SD70M-2Dude]

Trinity River Bottoms Boomer

You get a Brown Nose when you're busy shoveling coal into your favorite steam locomotive and rub same with your dirty coal stained glove! 

Only if it's lignite...

[Anonymous]

You get a Brown Nose when you're busy shoveling coal into your favorite steam locomotive and rub same with your dirty coal stained glove! 

[MidlandMike]

I can verify that C&S 641 is still on display in Leadville, as we saw it Wednesday on a Colorado ski trip.

[Firelock76]

Yes, C&S 641 is still up there on display next to the old C&S depot, which is now the office of a tourist railroad, the Leadville, Colorado and Southern.  641 isn't operating though.

[Anonymous]

I don't have the current CT yet but does the cover story on the last, highest standard gauge steam in US mention that C&S 641 is still way up yonder on top of the world on the Leadville, Colorado & Southern albeit not operating?  

[SD70M-2Dude]

I don't think you're brown-nosing Firelock, every issue I've bought has been great and I like the fact that there is often some Canadian content too.

For example the CNR Radio System article in the latest issue, and the "Please Go Easy" budd cars photo on the inside back cover.

[Firelock76]

Let me tell you (at the risk of sounding like I'm brown-nosing the publisher) just about every issue I've gotten of "Classic Trains" is a home-run.

My absolute favorite is the Summer 2013 "Interurban Special."  It's one that never made it to the magazine table at the gym or the recycle bin.  I didn't (and don't) have much interest in interurbans but I was absolutely fascinated by what I read.  CT got a letter from a grumpy subscriber saying interurbans weren't "real" railroads and the issue was a waste of time, but I couldn't disagree more.  That issue was a gem!  A great read and I sure learned something!

[PRR8259]

Ok, I was born in 1968, so I have no memory of steam in revenue service in America.  The cover photo got my interest so I bought it at the train store...

The outstanding color photographs and story of the last and highest outpost of mainline steam in the US just are so well done they brought tears to my eyes.  I don't know what else to say.  Several other articles were also great including the one about the last Nickel Plate Berkshire ever shopped and returned to freight service, for all too brief a final season.

This issue compares favorably with some of the best of all time including for example the 1972 or 1973 Trains "Her Spirit Will Never Die" issue about the last CZ F units running out their last miles in freight service on Western Pacific, and the August? 1981 "An Alco Adieu" issue.

John