Cream and Chocolate

California’s McCloud River Railroad had incentive per diem box cars in a striking, if not unusual, paint scheme. Here one of them pauses in the yard at Allent... (more)

Along with the Pickens and the Norwood & St. Lawrence, the National Railway Utilization Corporation was the parent of New York short line Middletown & New Jersey. A fairly new M&NJ incentive per d... (more)

In August of 1964, John Ingles was aboard a car ferry (probably Ann Arbor No. 7 or the Arthur Atkinson) about to dock at the Soo Line facility in Manitowoc, WI. A maroon Soo Line Alco can be seen ... (more)

Early morning in Phippsburg, Colorado finds a cushioned underframe, double door, fifty foot box car in the most iconic Rio Grande paint scheme at the end of a cut of cars.

It is past dusk as the westbound evening TP&W do-everything train gets to Canton, where it pulls an ancient home-road car from a siding.

Flying a flag that will fall during the year of this photo, a Detroit & Toledo Shore Line covered hopper stands in Toledo, Ohio.

Nine years after the FRA-mandated deadline for cars built before 1966 to have their roofwalks removed, there were still non-compliant cars in service. Here a Chesapeake & Ohio 40-foot boxcar, stil... (more)

By the late 1970’s, 50-ton hoppers were not uncommon, but their ranks were quickly dwindling. Here a Reading survivor visits Allentown Yard in its final years.

In 1964, the Nickel Plate Road was absorbed into the Norfolk & Western empire. Fourteen years later, many of its cars were still roaming the nation’s rail system. Here a classic offset-side two ... (more)

New Jersey’s fifteen-mile-long Rahway Valley was another short line that took advantage of the ICC incentive per diem boxcar rates of the late 1970’s. By the mid-1980’s, the rules were again... (more)

With more letters in its name than miles in its route, the Lake Erie Franklin and Clarion Railroad joined the per-diem boxcar craze of the late 1970’s. Here one of those cars passes through Alle... (more)

Wonder how the flour and sugar for your bread and Twinkies gets to the bakery? Believe it or not, oftentimes by rail! An airslide hopper with lettering for Hostess products is seen passing throu... (more)

GASX (GATX Corporation) stock car in use by Great Markwestern Packing Company. At least on Conrail, loaded, these would be the first cars behind the locomotives on intermodal trains, and there wou... (more)

One of many Norfolk Southern trains with John Deere machinery in the consist heads east on the Chicago Line. At least six of these trains have passed through northwest Indiana within the last ten ... (more)

New York short line Fonda Johnstown & Gloversville, part of the Delaware Otsego system, acquired ten Evans all-door box cars in 1979. One of them is seen here in Binghamton, New York, not long bef... (more)