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13

Seventy-five years ago, New York Central bet big

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

The scene: 230 Park Avenue, Manhattan, the stately 35-story Beaux Arts headquarters of the New York Central Railroad. The date: approximately 75 years ago this week. The decision: spend another big piece of $56 million toward the largest order of passenger cars in U.S. railroad history. With that, NYC expanded its purchase of what eventually would total more than 720 cars, spread across all three major U.S. carbuilders. Flush with postwar excitement — and the promise of the return of peac...

3

For Michael Gross, ‘Santa Fe’ means ‘Grandpa’

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

There’s a good chance anyone reading this blog has a family connection to railroading. I wouldn’t be surprised if half the readers of Classic Trains came to the railroad faith via a relative, mostly likely a father or grandfather or uncle. That was never truer than for Michael Gross, the film and television actor and Santa Fe devotee. Gross not only has followed the history and fortunes of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway for most of his life, he also mode...

9

Serving Pittsburgh, the right way

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

Taking the train these days from Pittsburgh to New York — or vice versa — is a pretty simple and, frankly, a rather sad affair. You’ve got one choice, Amtrak trains 42 and 43, the daily Pennsylvanian, and if you can’t make either one work, you’re left with driving or flying. The state of Pennsylvania is hoping to improve the situation by adding a second daily train, beginning in the 2023-24 fiscal year, which would be a big improvement. The state predict...

4

An SP photographer who deserves to be known

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

Any library with thousands of books and tens of thousands of photographs is bound to have its mysteries, and Kalmbach’s David P. Morgan Memorial Library is no exception. In the countless hours I’ve spent working in that hallowed room, looking for just the right black-and-white print, I’ve run into a familiar puzzle: Who was that photographer? It happened again this week while digging in the two file drawers of Southern Pacific photos. Here and there, in folders marked &l...

1

Ted Rose’s excellent Mexican adventures

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

Six weeks ago, I wrote here about how some prominent American railroad photographers scampered up to Canada to shoot steam as it was disappearing in the U.S. A lot of great photographs were made there, rendered all the more poignant because time was running out in the Dominion as well. I neglected to mention that the same dynamic caused some influential shooters to head south, to Mexico, where some fantastic steam railroading was there for the taking, if you were in the position to travel that ...

5

Seeing C&O 1309 is believing

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

As anyone who follows steam restorations knows, bringing a big engine back to life is a marathon, never a sprint. Union Pacific and its Big Boy notwithstanding, nearly every organization that has gotten into the game quickly discovered it would be a long and sometimes agonizing haul. I have firsthand knowledge. When I began scraping my knuckles on a Berkshire in college, it was 1971. That engine, Pere Marquette 1225, wouldn’t turn a wheel under its own power for another 15 years. S...

3

A moment with J.D.I.’s diesel

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

The scene was a spacious, well-equipped locomotive repair shop. A GP38 straddled an inspection pit, its Chessie System colors of blue, yellow, and vermilion gleaming under bright lights hung far above. It was surrounded by a hum of activity as mechanics went about putting the engine through its 92-day inspection. Soon they’d wrap up their work with signatures on the engine’s FRA Form 6180 blue card. The diesel would thrum to life, then back out the shop doors, ready for another assig...

6

EJ&E 765: another forgotten park engine

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

“There is nothing in this world as invisible as a monument.” — Robert Musil I had already decided to visit Elgin, Joliet & Eastern 2-8-2 No. 765 last week when I stumbled across this quote by Musil, an Austrian novelist and philosopher, but it seems perfect. Tucked away in obscure Gateway Park, along E. Fourth Avenue (U.S. 12) just east of downtown Gary, Ind., the 765 is about as invisible as a monument can be. But not to me. I have a thing for lonely park engines, and la...

11

Remembering J. David Ingles

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

The greater ClassicTrains and Trains family has been reeling this week over the loss of our dear friend and colleague, J. David Ingles. As most of you likely know by now, Dave died last Sunday after a brief illness. He was in a rehabilitation facility following back surgery and fell victim to an unexpected complication. Our hearts go out to his daughter Susan, his two grandchildren, and hundreds, nay thousands more in his orbit. I’m one of them. Dave has been part of m...

8

‘Canadian Steam!’ revisited

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

If all had gone according to plan this year, just about now we’d be packing up the car for a road trip to Canada to visit old friends. Railroading would be on the menu, as well as good restaurants and the golden countryside of Ontario in autumn. Alas, the current Covid-19 restrictions got in the way. Canada will have to wait until next year — if we’re lucky. Meanwhile, what to do about the Canadian mood I’m in? For me, the country and the season go together. It’s ...

5

Return to Alvin

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

Most people who read this blog probably have a central, indelible memory of trains from childhood. It’s part of our DNA. For me, that memory traces back to about 1961, when my parents Woody and Marie Keefe would take us kids on a semi-annual car trip from Michigan down to the little farm town of Alvin, Ill., milepost 111.2 on the Chicago & Eastern Illinois Railroad, midway between Hoopeston and Danville. There, in a neat little white Victorian house on Railroad Avenue, we&rsquo...

10

When passengers rode along the Front Range

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

A Trains News Wire item caught my eye not long ago: “Front Range rail line could carry 3 million annually,” said the headline. In a report to the Southwest Chief & Front Range Passenger Rail Commission, the Colorado Department of Transportation estimated such a corridor — with trains running the 179 miles between Pueblo and Fort Collins, with Denver in the middle — would see upwards of 9,200 riders every weekday. It’s an exciting proposition. But it&...

7

New York Central's steam legacy is in good hands

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

I’ve seen a lot of good steam locomotive books in my day. I’m guessing close to 50 percent of the stuff in my library is related to the subject. Looking at the spines I see so many familiar names — Staufer, Bruce, Morgan, Withuhn, Lamb, Drury, Huddleston — it’s tempting to think that everything to say about steam has been said. Yet nothing quite prepared me for the books that began showing up on my front porch four years ago from the New York Central System Histori...

8

Of Donald Furler, Linn Westcott, and A.C.K.

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

This has been a pretty good year for railroad books, and none has excited me quite as much as the next one coming from the Center for Railroad Photography & Art (CRPA). It’s called The Railroad Photography of Donald W. Furler, and it’s a revelation, at least for me. Furler was one of those trailblazing shooters of the 1940s and early ’50’s who put railroad photography on the map and, not incidentally, helped a little magazine out of Milwaukee get off the ground...

3

The view from Trout Lake

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

As you pull into town on Michigan Highway 123, Trout Lake looks like its name — remote, woodsy, like a set from the 1990s TV show Northern Exposure. You arrive after passing miles and miles of birch and pine, skirting the edge of the Sault Ste. Marie State Forest near the eastern tip of the Upper Peninsula, then slow down to pass Mark’s Trading Post, the Trout Lake IGA, and the Buckhorn tavern before you arrive at your destination. There, the adjacent rails still shiny with dai...

1

Most years, ‘summer’ means ‘NRHS’

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

In any normal summer, by this week several of my friends would be packing for a favorite seasonal tradition, the annual convention of the National Railway Historical Society. For years it was also a fixture on my July or August calendars, an event I relished for its usual promise of mainline steam and rare mileage. Mostly, it would be a chance to see old friends. Alas, it’s not happening this year for me, or for anyone else. On June 7, the NRHS announced that its 2020 convention, planned ...

2

What would Ben Heineman do?

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

I’ve been trying to follow the long-running dispute between Metra and the Union Pacific, which operates Metra commuter trains on three of Chicago’s busiest routes. Theirs is a tangle of disagreements involving the two railroads’ operating agreement, the Surface Transportation Board, a federal lawsuit, and, always, who is going to pay for what. Analysis of this mess is, fortunately for me, not within the purview of a blog for Classic Trains — it’s better l...

5

High-water mark for the 'Sunset Limited'

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

On a typically muggy summer Sunday in New Orleans, a small crowd gathered in the trainshed of New Orleans’ old red brick and stone Union Station on South Rampart Street, ready for a party. At some point a vivacious Lindy Boggs, wife of Second District Congressman Hale Boggs and herself a future congresswoman, smiled at Southern Pacific Executive Vice President E. A. Craft and stepped up to the last car of a gleaming new streamlined train. Moments later she doused the train in a loud...

0

Conrail museum will honor Big Blue

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

Every railroad deserves its own museum, if you ask me. I can’t think of a single North American railroad company that didn’t have some kind of meaningful impact on the world surrounding it, enough to warrant keeping its legacy alive. That goes double when you’re talking about Conrail, the Northeastern and Midwestern giant created on April 1, 1976, out of the teetering ruins of six separate railroads. The consolidation of Penn Central, Reading, Erie Lackawanna, Lehigh Val...

1

Reading Camelback is back in the spotlight

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

Never underestimate the steam locomotive’s ability to still make news, even in 2020. That goes double if it involves the obscure, the rare, the nearly forgotten. Old engines have a way of creeping back into the spotlight. Case in point: the sale this week of former Philadelphia & Reading 0-4-0 No. 1187, a Camelback-style engine owned and stored for decades by the Strasburg Rail Road, one of our leading tourist lines. Strasburg concluded a long time ago that 1187 didn’t figure in...

4

Rio Grande Southern No. 20 ready for its star turn

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

As if the legend of the fabulous Colorado narrow gauge needs further burnishing, we’ll have a new icon to admire come August 1, when the Colorado Railroad Museum dedicates the latest addition to its roster of operating equipment. On that Saturday, the museum is scheduled to dedicate former Rio Grande Southern (RGS) 4-6-0 No. 20, the object of a 14-year restoration. As you can see here, the compact Ten-Wheeler is a jewel, likely more gorgeous today than it was when the plan...

6

Union Railroad’s king of steam switchers

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

Nowhere is the pace of change over the past 20 years more evident than what has happened to U.S. Steel’s various railroads. Once upon a time, the names Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range; Elgin, Joliet & Eastern; and Bessemer & Lake Erie were as emblematic of America’s biggest steelmaker as the belching mills of Gary and Pittsburgh. Now U.S. Steel appears poised to end its long and celebrated role as a railroad operator. The Trains News Wire recently reported that US...

2

Hall of Fame honors Woodard, Gurley

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

The National Railroad Hall of Fame continues to distinguish itself by calling attention to some of the giants of railroading. Last week, the Hall, based in Galesburg, Ill., added two more names to its gallery of inductees: William E. Woodard, famed designer at Lima Locomotive Works; and Fred Gurley, legendary president during Santa Fe’s glory years of the 1940s and ’50s. Organized in 1992, the Hall has done a lot to bring the names of prominent railroaders to a wider audie...

10

In the wake of June 21, 1970

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

Monday, June 22, 1970, was a busy news day, judging by the front page of the New York Times. Any of a half-dozen stories could have led the paper: revelations the U.S. was bombing insurgent trails in Cambodia; 220 killed as the “Indochina War” intensified; Attorney General John Mitchell heralding drug raids in 10 cities; protest groups descending on an American Medical Association meeting in Chicago. But all of that was pushed aside for the top spot, the upper-right corner of t...

6

Looking back on DPM’s “finest railroad”

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

The United States reached its peak railroad mileage around 1920, when there were approximately 252,000 route miles across the country. You might say it’s been downhill ever since, although railroad economists would tell you that’s a good thing. But it’s also a good thing to see a substantial new railroad built, like what’s planned for remote northeastern Utah. There, a consortium of public and private interests — notably the railroad holding company Rio Grande Paci...

6

H. Reid could shoot as well as he could write

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

A few weeks ago, before the pandemic interrupted regular visits to the Kalmbach library, I was pawing through some photo files to help illustrate a program I’m scheduled to give this fall in Washington, D.C. Photo research in the library is always fun — in those deep files, you never know what’s going to pop up next. I was in the Chesapeake & Ohio drawer, in a folder marked “Steam Passenger – Virginia,” when my thumb suddenly turned up a real head turner,...

5

Amfleet enters its own classic era

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

You know the world is shifting below your feet when, one after the other, the routine or the mundane hangs around long enough to become what we all call “classic.” Case in point: Amtrak’s Amfleet. Recently it was announced that Rail Excursion Management Co., which manages a fleet of private cars for the excursion and heritage railroad biz, has acquired two Amfleet coaches and an Amcafé. The company is said to be the first private operator to acquire examples of th...

5

Nobody could write like Pete Hansen

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

Successful magazine editors are in an endless search for talent, especially if most of their content comes from freelance writers. That’s basically the editorial model for Classic Trains and Trains magazines: readers write the stories and the staff edits them. You never know when a manila envelope from the next Fred Frailey is going to land on your desk, or in your email inbox, and when you do, you jump on it. That these two magazines have done well with this mo...

5

Reading 2124 was a scene stealer

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

I’m easily drawn to the intersection of railroads and movies, especially now with so much time at home. No NBA, no baseball, worn down by pandemic news — I’m ripe for seeing trains on the big screen. If it’s a film I haven’t seen before, even better. That’s why page 9 in the May 1960 issue of Trains magazine caught my eye. Headlined “20th Century-Fox Stars 4-8-4,” the brief photo story shows the platforms of a big-city station and the ar...

3

Rx for the homebound: a new Fred Frailey book

Posted 3 years ago by Kevin Keefe

Sometime in January of 1988, Trains magazine’s production editor, Nancy Bartol, handed me the lineup — we called it the dope sheet — for the May 1988 issue. Listed there for pages 26–45 was something quite exciting: “River Wars,” the first installment of a two-part story by Fred W. Frailey. I had admired Frailey the writer ever since I first encountered his auspicious August 1979 debut in Trains. Reading his Kansas City Southern saga, I thought...

Seventy-five years ago, New York Central bet big

For Michael Gross, ‘Santa Fe’ means ‘Grandpa’

Serving Pittsburgh, the right way

An SP photographer who deserves to be known

Ted Rose’s excellent Mexican adventures

Seeing C&O 1309 is believing

A moment with J.D.I.’s diesel

EJ&E 765: another forgotten park engine

Remembering J. David Ingles

‘Canadian Steam!’ revisited

Return to Alvin

When passengers rode along the Front Range

New York Central's steam legacy is in good hands

Of Donald Furler, Linn Westcott, and A.C.K.

The view from Trout Lake

Most years, ‘summer’ means ‘NRHS’

What would Ben Heineman do?

High-water mark for the 'Sunset Limited'

Conrail museum will honor Big Blue

Reading Camelback is back in the spotlight

Rio Grande Southern No. 20 ready for its star turn

Union Railroad’s king of steam switchers

Hall of Fame honors Woodard, Gurley

In the wake of June 21, 1970

Looking back on DPM’s “finest railroad”

H. Reid could shoot as well as he could write

Amfleet enters its own classic era

Nobody could write like Pete Hansen

Reading 2124 was a scene stealer

Rx for the homebound: a new Fred Frailey book

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