Bug Slug

Countless Alco switchers were rebuilt with Caterpillar or Cummins engines, and sold to small mine operations throughout Appalachia. Most had their cabs removed or sealed s... (more)

A former NYC RS-3 is in charge of Penn Central's Pittsfield-Adams (MA) local freight as it crosses the Cheshire Reservoir causeway at Cheshire, MA, northbound on a spring morning. This part of the... (more)

An ex-Interstate yard crew shoves three (Nos. 1, 2 and 3) of Westmoreland Coal's re-engined Alco S2's through Appalachia en route to Andover Yard. Interestingly, the units are now lettered PRC 1, ... (more)

Arkansas & Missouri’s Fort Smith Turn passes the Tyson Foods feed plant in Springdale, Arkansas shortly after getting underway.

Lehigh Cement ex-API #5 [ALCo RS3] (servicable, but unused) Alsen, NY Locomotive believed to be ex-Birmingham Southern #151. Has since been adopted by a preservation group.

Ghost in the night
Chicago & North Western Alco C628 sits under a ghostly coaling tower on a foggy night in Escanaba, Michigan, in October 1984.

Immediately after its formation, Conrail transferred all six-axle Alco Centuries to Ohio for use in iron ore drag freight service. Of course a lot of that ore was destined for the steel mills in t... (more)

Ohio River S6 #56 switches the Kenova coal terminal in October of 1995.

Snow, Stacks, and Centuries

Eastbound Sea-Land stack train NTV-4 rolls past the site of the Erie yard in Deposit, New York. Two C430’s and a GP18, all two decades old, are handl... (more)

After bringing in a southbound coal train into Butler Yard, Chicago & North Western power waits out a Wisconsin snowstorm on January 4, 1986. Two Alco C628s and a pair of EMD SD40-2s make up the l... (more)

The Brillion and Forest Junction Railroad was a shortline that operated between its namesake towns in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Its power was a chop nose former Milwaukee Road RSC2 which st... (more)

GBW 313 crosses Hwy 121 near Independence, WI in May of 1992.

Continuing the story from photo, 595404. After ME-2 completed its set-out at Bound Brook, my father and I drove to Middlesex to get a picture of ME-2 from the Mountain Avenue bridge. In an unusu... (more)

One of a Kind

For reasons that I have been unable to determine, Amtrak found itself as the owner of a single Alco S2, originally U.S. Army 7110. The switcher, initially retaining i... (more)

Not what I expected to see as I rolled through Kansas on the original routing of Route 66. Seems like an unusual spot to find an Erie Lackawanna locomotive.