Locomotives and railroads featured in this edition include:
√ Sunlight has broken out after an overnight snowfall as a Connecticut Southern Railroad freight train crosses the Connecticut River at Enfield, CT, running over Amtrak’s busy Springfield Line. The lead General Electric B39-8 locomotive carries the bright orange and yellow paint scheme of Connecticut Southern’s owner, worldwide shortline holding company Genesee & Wyoming. The 78-mile CSOR was created in 1996 to serve customers between Springfield, MA and New Haven, CT, as well as on branch lines in the Hartford area.
√ A passenger shortline Grand Canyon Railway train prepares to depart Grand Canyon Village on a bright winter afternoon. The railroad restored passenger service on the long dormant 64-mile line between Williams, AZ, and the Grand Canyon in 1989. It carries 150,000 people to and from the South Rim of the canyon each year, reducing automobile traffic on the main highway to the national park. Most trains are powered by diesel locomotives such as these former Amtrak F40PHs, although steam makes appearances on select dates.
√ The aurora borealis glows in the early morning sky as Alaska Railroad Train 130S rolls southbound near Summit, mile 312.5, on the railroad’s Mountain Subdivision. The train is led by a pair of 4,000 h.p., EMD-built SD70MAC locomotives with HTC-R radial or steerable trucks. Each pair of three-axle trucks is computer controlled and pivot in their frames through curves to reduce friction and wear on wheels and rails. Begun in 1903, Alaska’s first railroad now carries passengers and freight on 482 miles of track between Seward and Fairbanks with freight service by water to Seattle, WA.
√ On its final run, Ontario Northland snowplow ONT 560 is clearing track westbound toward Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada. Built in 1949 by National Steel Car, 560 is being pushed by engine 1805, a 2,000 h.p. GMD (Canadian-built) GP38-2. The Ontario Northland Railway is operated by the government of Ontario, Canada and runs freight and passenger service between Toronto and Moosonee.
√ A trio of vintage Canadian National EMD locomotives is working to unload a Mesabe Range taconite pellet train at CN’s Duluth Ore Dock 6. The dock is more than 1,300 feet long, has a capacity of 68,000 tons, and provides ground storage for up to 2.6 million tons of pellet, along with a shiploader conveyor system to load ore carriers with iron ore, iron ore pellets, coal, or limestone. Located on Lake Superior in Minnesota, the Port of Duluth is the farthest inland,
freshwater seaport in America with 20 privately owned bulk cargo docks along 49 miles of harbor frontage.
√ Through a cloud of steam, a pair of ex-Duluth Missabe & Iron Range SD40T-2s bracket a Canadian National SD40-2W preparing to move a pellet train at United Taconite’s Fairlane Facility near Eveleth, MN. CN operates 10 to 11 trains per week, each with 140 cars holding up to 80 tons, or 11,200 tons per train. Trains deliver pellets to the Port of Duluth, a distance of 62 miles.
√ Running northbound beneath snow-capped Mt. Rainier, Amtrak’s Coast Starlight is passing through Boeing interlocking in South Seattle, WA, about to reach Seattle’s King Street Station, its destination. Led by a pair of Siemens ALC-44 Charger locomotives, the daily train operates between Los Angeles, CA through Santa Barbara, San Francisco, Sacramento, Portland, and Seattle. Over the course of 35 hours, Starlight passengers see some of the most dramatic scenery along the Pacific Coast.
√ The yard at King Street Station in Seattle, WA is home to Amtrak and Sounder trains. Opened in 1906, the station originally served the Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railways. In 1971 it became Amtrak’s only station in Seattle. Commuter rail service opened in 2000, and today Sounder commuter rail trains operated by BNSF carry 7,000 riders each week between Seattle and Everett in the north, and Lakewood in the south. Amtrak 313 is a Siemens ALC-44 Charger. Sounder 332 is a Bombardier BiLevel cab car.
√ A JetBlue Airbus A320 appears to have taken off from the cab of Florida East Coast 821 as it leads Train 101, passing beneath a Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport runway. Locomotive 821, a GE ES44C4 built in 2014, is a dual-fuel engine. FEC runs its fleet of 24 ES44C4s on liquefied
natural gas. Each pair of locomotives is joined by an LNG tender between them.
√ R.J. Corman is in the railroad business as both a holding company for 19 shortline railroads operating 1,350 miles of track in 11 states, as well as providing contracted services ranging from signaling and construction, to switching, distribution and transloading. Headquartered in Kentucky, the company celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2023. Painted in anniversary colors, engines 2023 and 1973, EMD SD70Ms, lead a Kentucky Derby special on CSX rails in May of 2023.
√ It’s 7:11 p.m. on June 21, 2023, as the Deseret Power Railway coal empty returning from the Bonanza power plant in Utah approaches milepost 17 and Midway, CO. These E60C-2 electric locomotives are energized by a 50,000-volt overhead wire on catenary supports along a 35-mile line from the Deserado Mine loadout in Colorado and the Bonanza Power Plant. The railroad was originally built in 1982-1983 and called the Deseret-Western. The first two
locomotives on this train are the line’s original E60C-2 locomotives. They were acquired from GE after Nationales de Mexico cancelled an order for the 6,000-h.p. motors. The third locomotive in the photo (DPR-4) is one of five former NdeM E60C-2s originally purchased in the mid-2000s. This electric-powered coal-hauling operation is the last of its kind in America.
√ Also hauling Colorado coal is Union Pacific on its former Denver & Rio Grande Western routes reaching large mines in the northern and western parts of the state. The antitheses of Deseret Power’s single-train shuttle, these coal routes carry trainloads of black diamonds to scores of distant markets. On December 1, 2002, a pair of Southern Pacific GE AC4400CW locomotives leads an eastbound UP coal train at mile 22.6 on the scenic Moffat Tunnel Subdivision between Plainview and Clay, CO. The train is dropping downgrade at the mouth of Coal Creek Canyon and is about to cross Blue Mountain Drive grade crossing. In recent years, coal tonnage has dropped dramatically in response to power plant closings and conversions to natural gas.
√ Amid a near-constant stream of S-, Q-, and Z-symbolled intermodal trains, something different: a unit train of loaded ethanol tank cars snaking through a colorful Santa Ana Canyon in Yorba Linda, CA. BNSF train U-MRRWAT7-04A has 90 loaded tank cars with a combined weight of 12,129 tons. Freshly repainted BNSF 7740 (GE built ES44DC), along with BNSF 5775 (ES44AC) and BNSF 7959 (ES44C4) are on the train’s head end. At the rear, Canadian Pacific 9750 (AC4400C) and BNSF 7721 (ES44DC) are providing more horsepower.
√ On yet another rainy day in Fullerton, CA, BNSF Train S-LBENSA1-19L (intermodal stacks; Long Beach, CA to the Norfolk Southern Ashland Ave. Yard, IL) holds on Track 2 to allow a hotter intermodal eastbound to overtake it, along with a Metrolink Perris Valley Line train after that. This may be two trains combined, as it has eight locomotives (BNSF 7343, 5455, GECX 4884, BNSF 6088, 7386, 7463, GECX 4883, and BNSF 4437) hauling 146 loaded cars (each “well” counts as a car) stretching for 13,010-feet, nearly 2.5 miles. The old Santa Fe station, now serving Amtrak and Metrolink, is on the right.
√ Valley Railroad’s Essex Steam Train prepares to depart the station in Essex, CT to take passengers to a riverboat for a ride on the Connecticut River. Powering this six-car train is VALE 3025, a 2-8-2 Mikado, built in 1989 by China’s Tangshan Locomotive and Rolling Stock Works for Pennsylvania’s Knox & Kane Railroad. Badly damaged in a shop fire, it was sold in 2008 to the Valley Railroad. The Valley rebuilt it with a new cab and largely rebuilt tender, to more closely resemble a New York, New Haven & Hartford Mikado, numbering it NH 3025.
√ It is 6:38 pm and the Los Angeles Union Station Train Festival in September 2023 (left) has been closed for 38 minutes. The sun is due to set at 7:07 pm, and rumor says that Atchison Topeka & Santa Fe Railway 3751, a Santa Fe-type 4-8-4 is about to return to the Amtrak facility a few miles south. Steam locomotive afficionados are growing anxious. Will this 1927-built Baldwin locomotive move while there is still any sun? The golden light of the gloaming is creating fantastic photo opportunities.
√ BNSF train S-LBELPK1-14L originated in the port of Long Beach, CA and is bound for Logistics Park in Kansas City KS on July 14, 2023. It may be a BNSF Railway train, but three of its four locomotives are foreign (one, literally): Norfolk Southern 4036, an AC44C6M, and Kansas City Southern de México 4541, an AC4400CW on the headend, and, on the rear, BNSF 5026, a Dash 9-44CW, and Norfolk Southern 4176, an AC44C6M.
√ BNSF Railway Guaranteed Service Intermodal Train Q-ATGLAC6-23A is at Yorba Linda, CA, on June 27, 2023, heading from Atlanta, GA, to Los Angeles. The consist isn’t very long today, warranting only two diesels. But with a Norfolk Southern 8910 up front, an ES44AC, teamed with BNSF 1021, a Dash 9-44CW in its original livery from 1996, the train is worth a second look.
√ Autumn foliage is peaking in Windsor, CT, as Amtrak’s Vermonter runs south on its daily 598-mile trip between St. Albans, VT, and Washington, D.C. Leading the train is engine 145, a P42DC, wearing a special Amtrak Phase III paint scheme commemorating the railroad’s 40th anniversary in 2011. Amtrak’s fleet of 207 P42s, built by General Electric between 1996 and 2001, have handled most short- and long-distance trains throughout the 21,400-mile system for more than two decades. They are gradually being replaced by new Siemens Charger locomotives.
√ America’s only high-speed passenger rail is provided by Amtrak’s Acela trains on the electrified route between Boston, MA and Washington D.C. With 150 m.p.h. maximum speeds in parts of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Jersey, the Acelas have been serving the Northeast Corridor since 2000. A
Washington-bound train streaks through Old Saybrook, CT, on a sunny autumn afternoon. New-generation Acela trains are scheduled to replace these first high-speed sets in 2025.
√ In the afternoon on June 22, 2023, a thunderstorm advances eastward as a Union Pacific stack train quickly works westbound toward the top of Wyoming’s Peru Hill through the signals at milepost 823 on the railroad’s Evanston Subdivision. Following a crew change on a departing westbound train, Peru Hill’s grade begins at West Green River after crossing the bridge spanning Green River where the rails climb to an elevation of 6,100 feet in less than eight miles to reach Peru at mile 824.9. Today’s big locomotives with high horsepower and tractive effort make for a good show of railroading against gravity on UP’s Peru Hill.
√ There’s nary a storm to be seen (left) on the clear blue morning of September 12, 2007, as an eastbound Union Pacific manifest freight passes under the signal bridge at Hermosa, WY, while climbing upgrade over Sherman Hill. To conquer the grade that once relied on helper locomotives for eastbound trains, UP built a new main line from Laramie to Hermosa in 1901, reducing the eastward grade to 0.8 percent from the steeper 1.55 percent original grade. This new route was eventually double-tracked and called Track 1 and 2, while the old route is Track 3 and still used today, mostly for westbound trains. Eastbound at Hermosa, the three main lines funnel into two, for the twin bores of Hermosa Tunnels.
√ Morant’s Curve in Alberta, Canada was named to honor Canadian Pacific Railway photographer Nicholas Morant. The Curve is best for photographing eastbound trains, so, naturally, we got westbound Canadian Pacific Kansas City Train 301, a grain train headed for Vancouver, BC. At least this train had a rear-facing Distributed Power Unit! CPKC Train 301 featured an interesting assortment of locomotives: Canadian Pacific 8576, an AC4400CW, and Union Pacific 8942, an SD70Ace, on the point, with CP8750, an ES40AC, and Norfolk Southern 4330, an AC44C6M (ex-NS 9101, Dash 8-40CW) as the mid-train Distributed Power Units, and CP 8600, an AC4400CW, for the rear DPU. The mountains in the background, part of the Bow Range of the Rockies, also mark the Continental Divide.
√ At half-past noon, Canadian Pacific Kansas City Intermodal Train 113 (Hochelaga, Québec, to Coquitlam, British Columbia), slows and enters the siding at Field, British Columbia, for a crew change. Besides being on the western side of the Continental Divide (and, therefore, in BC), Field, at an elevation of 4,121-feet is also the western end of CPKC’s Laggan Sub and the eastern end of its Mountain Sub, hence the crew change. From this point, the railroad will run along the Kicking Horse River (which flows to the Pacific Ocean) rather than the Bow River (which flows to the Atlantic). Canadian Pacific 9379, an ES44AC, and 8020, an AC4400CWM, as the mid-train Distributed Power Unit is crawling to a stop in the shadow of Mount Stephen.
Other Railroading Titles
Tide-mark publishes a notable group of train calendars featuring classic images of steam locomotives and great named trains of railroads across the United States. Calendar titles for 2025 include: Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, Denver Rio Grande Railroad in Colorado Narrow Gauge, Gulf Mobile & Ohio, Illinois Central, Milwaukee Road, New York Central, Pennsylvania Railroad, Rock Island, Santa Fe Railway, the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific. Classic trains are also pictured in Great Trains featuring paintings by artist Gil Bennett and in Howard Fogg’s Trains. Contemporary trains are the focus of the Railroading! calendar that offers 24 spectacular full-color images of trains from across North America. Tide-mark also publishes the Streetcars and Trolleys calendar with classic images from a wide range of cities in the U.S., as well as the new San Francisco Cable Cars title.
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