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train · 25k rows

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The Chicago Freight Car Leasing Company provides railcar leasing and management to companies throughout North America for a variety of commodities, including agricultural & food products; chemical & processed mineral products; metals, ores, aggregates, mineral rock/stone, and petroleum products. Chicago Freight Car Lea...
A daughter company, CFCL Australia, owns and leases the largest private fleet of locomotives and wagons in the Australian market. The company was established in response to the privatization of the former state-based railways in that country.
The Covington, Columbus and Black Hills Railroad is an historic narrow gauge railroad that operated in the U.S. state of Nebraska.
Possibly the only narrow gauge revenue railroad in Nebraska, it opened in 1876 and ran on of narrow gauge track in the northeast part of the state from Covington (South Sioux City) to Ponca.
In 1879 it merged to become part of the Sioux City and Nebraska Railroad. It later merged into the Chicago, Saint Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha Railway which saw the line extended to Wynot.
The Chicago, Fort Wayne and Eastern Railroad is a short line railroad offering service from Tolleston, Indiana to Crestline, Ohio, United States over the former Fort Wayne Line of the Pennsylvania Railroad. It began operations in 2004 as a division of the Central Railroad of Indianapolis (CERA), under the overall corpo...
Conrail acquired the line in 1976, and later sold some of it to the Norfolk Southern Railway to relieve that company's ex-Nickel Plate Road main line. CSX Transportation acquired the entire line in the 1999 breakup of Conrail, and began to make improvements, including new crossing signals, paving crossings, and weeding...
In 2004, operations under the Chicago, Fort Wayne and Eastern Railroad name began; from the beginning of operations, the railroad has been owned by RailAmerica.
In 2011 former Norfolk Southern supervisor Joseph (Joe) Parsons was named the General Manager of Chicago, Fort Wayne, & Eastern Railroad headquartered in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
On July 23, 2012, Genesee & Wyoming Inc. announced that it intended to purchase RailAmerica in a deal valued at $1.39 billion. Approval of the purchase was granted by the U.S. Surface Transportation Board on December 19, 2012, and ownership of the Chicago, Fort Wayne and Eastern was transferred to the G&W.
Traffic on the line includes grain, lumber products, chemicals, steel, and petroleum. The CFE transported around 39,000 carloads in 2008.
Meridian Southern Railway , in east Mississippi, USA, is a short line freight railroad linking Meridian, and Waynesboro, Mississippi and intermediate stations. The railroad is connected to the national rail network by its connection to the Kansas City Southern Railway at Meridian. The MDS utilizes five General Electric...
Originally, this line was part of the Mobile and Ohio Railroad mainline connecting Mobile, Alabama with St. Louis, Missouri. The segment between Waynesboro and Mobile has been abandoned.
The MDS is one of four shortlines (the others being the Owego Harford Railway, the Lehigh Railway, and the Luzerne and Susquehanna Railway), all part of a shortline holding company headquartered in Owego, New York. http://www.ohry.net/
List of defunct railroads of North America
The defunct railroads of North America regrouped several railroads in Canada and the United States. The following is a list of the past railroad companies.
Western & Atlantic Railroad #49 "Texas" is a 4-4-0 "American" type steam locomotive built in 1856 for the Western & Atlantic Railroad by Danforth, Cooke & Co., best known as the principal pursuit engine in the Great Locomotive Chase, chasing the "General" after the latter was stolen by Union saboteurs in an attempt to ...
The "Texas" was built in October 1856 for the Western & Atlantic Railroad by locomotive manufacturer Danforth, Cooke and Company in Paterson, New Jersey, and subsequently shipped from Paterson to the Port of Savannah, thence delivered via the Georgia Rail Road & Banking Company and Macon & Western Railroad to the W&A h...
The "Texas" provided freight and passenger service on the W&A's main line between Atlanta and Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Civil War and the Great Locomotive Chase.
At the onset of the Civil War, the locomotive primarily hauled local freight and cargo without any major incident. However, on April 12, 1862, the "Texas", while pulling a load of 12 cars from Dalton southbound towards Atlanta, was commandeered by William Allen Fuller to chase down spies, led by James J. Andrews, durin...
Following the incident, the "Texas" and nine boxcars were loaned to the East Tennessee & Virginia Railroad to haul salt and cargo from the mines at Saltville, Virginia in 1863. While in Virginia, the engine was captured by the U.S. Military Railroad (USMRR). Eventually, as Union forces made their way toward Atlanta, th...
The USMRR returned the "Texas", W&ARR, and its other locomotives to the State of Georgia on September 25, 1865. The engine continued to serve the W&ARR during the Reconstruction era, though under several different stewards as the public railroad was steadily privatized. The State of Georgia numbered the W&ARR's engines...
In 1870, the W&ARR was leased out, for a period of twenty years, to a group of Georgia investors led by former war-time governor Joseph E. Brown. Alongside the W&ARR's other 44 locomotives at the time, the "Texas" was renumbered and renamed - becoming the "Cincinnati", number 12. During the lease period, the engine rec...
The W&ARR lease was renewed in 1890, though with a different lessee: the Nashville, Chattanooga and St. Louis Railway. The "Texas" remained the "Cincinnati" under the NC&StL and was renumbered 212.
In 1895, the engine was withdrawn from mainline service and stored on a siding in Vinings, Georgia. By 1903, the engine had briefly returned to service on a branch line serving a corn mill in Emerson, Georgia. It served there until its retirement in 1907, at which time it was sent to the W&ARR's yard in Atlanta, where ...
In August 1907, an article in the "Atlanta Constitution" brought to attention the deteriorated state of the locomotive and its historical significance. A fundraising effort began for its preservation. In response, NC&StL president John W. Thomas stated that he was willing to turn the engine to either the State of Georg...
A grassroots campaign led by the "Atlanta Georgian" newspaper and an ad-hoc group (composed of the Atlanta chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Inman Park Students' Club, and the Atlanta Woman's Club) succeeded in securing the locomotive for the City of Atlanta instead. On February 17, 1908, the "Tex...
However, despite the "Texas"'s donation, the locomotive remained in the W&A yard. In 1910, Atlanta artist and historian, Wilbur G. Kurtz, began writing articles in the "Atlanta Constitution" advocating preservation of the "Texas." The following year, the engine was moved to Grant Park, though it remained exposed to the...
In 1936, the locomotive, under the guidance of Kurtz, was cosmetically restored to resemble what he believed to be its wartime appearance. The engine's smokestack was replaced with one resembling the balloon design of the Civil War era, its horizontal strap-iron slat cowcatcher was restored, as were the nameplates on t...
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, there was growing concern about the condition of the panoramic painting of the Battle of Atlanta (the Atlanta Cyclorama), which had suffered from storm damage as well as long periods of neglect. In 1972, the City of Atlanta developed plans to renovate the Cyclorama building, including...
After the 2008 restoration of the Gettysburg Cyclorama, focus shifted once more to the Atlanta Cyclorama and its deteriorated condition, prompting the City of Atlanta to explore another restoration and potential relocation of the painting. Ultimately, a decision was made to relocate and restore the painting, with a tra...
Around this time, the cities of Marietta, Kennesaw, as well as the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth, Georgia expressed interest in acquiring the locomotive. However, city officials in Atlanta determined the engine should remain preserved in tandem with the painting.
In July 2014, the city of Atlanta announced that the Cyclorama collection, including the painting, locomotive, and other artifacts were to be relocated to the Atlanta History Center in Buckhead. The "Texas" was removed from the Cyclorama building in December 2015, marking the first time the "Texas" has been removed fro...
126 and the above mentioned Norfolk and Western no. 611.
The "Texas" was scheduled to begin its two-day move to the Atlanta History Center on May 3, 2017, but a logistical issue delayed the beginning of the move from North Carolina until May 4. It arrived on May 5. The Atlanta History Center's new Atlanta railroads exhibit, featuring the locomotive, opened on November 17, 20...
Western & Atlantic Railroad #3 "General" is a 4-4-0 "American" type steam locomotive built in 1855 by the Rogers, Ketchum & Grosvenor in Paterson, New Jersey for the Western & Atlantic Railroad, best known as the engine stolen by Union spies in the Great Locomotive Chase, an attempt to cripple the Confederate rail netw...
Built in 1855 by Rogers, Ketchum & Grosvenor in Paterson, New Jersey, "The General" provided freight and passenger service between Atlanta, Georgia, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, before the Civil War on the Western and Atlantic Railroad of the State of Georgia and later, the Western and Atlantic Railroad Company.
During the Civil War on April 12, 1862, "The General" was commandeered by Northerners led by James J. Andrews at Big Shanty (now Kennesaw, Georgia), and abandoned north of Ringgold, after being pursued by William Allen Fuller and the "Texas". Low on water and wood, the "General" eventually lost steam pressure and speed...
In 1864, the Battle of Atlanta had forced the withdrawal of General John Bell Hood's forces from the city. Hood ordered the ordnance depot destroyed as he left Atlanta on September 1, 1864. To this end, the General was severely damaged by being run into boxcars of ammunition and the Missouri locomotive. This was done d...
It had been speculated by some that, after the "General" had been damaged, the invading Union army restored the engine and operated it. However, many historians believe that the engine was left untouched for the remainder of the war. The Union army had based its repair shops in Nashville, and there is no evidence to su...
After the war ended, the "General" was repaired and continued service on the Western and Atlantic. In the 1870s, the "General" was completely rebuilt, it had received a new pilot, boiler, and other components. Most notably, its three dome configuration was reduced to two domes, and its Radley-Hunter style balloon stack...
Before the Civil War, most railways in the south, including the W&A, did not give their engines numbers. Rather, they were simply named, such as the "General". When the railroad began numbering engines after the war, the "General" was the 39th engine to be acquired by the road, and was numbered accordingly. Locomotives...
In the mid-1880s, the Atlanta and Florida Railroad began construction. During this time, the W&A had a locomotive surplus after buying several more modern engines, so they leased the "General" to the A&F from 1887 to 1888 to assist in construction.
The locomotive was originally built to the southern states standard rail gauge of . After a change to the northern states gauge was mandated by June 1, 1886, "The General" was converted to be compatible with the U.S. Standard Gauge of .
In 1901, the "General" was placed on display in the Chattanooga Union Depot. There, it remained on display for nearly fifty years, only being removed for short periods for exhibitions. In particular, the engine was taken to Baltimore in 1927 to participate in the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad's "Fair of the Iron Horse", ...
The state of Georgia's interest in the "General" soon raised tensions with the city of Chattanooga, where the "General" was displayed. In 1967, the city of Kennesaw, where the engine had been stolen in 1862, requested to have the engine attend a fundraiser held by the Big Shanty Historical Society. The "General" was on...
After the L&N won the legal dispute concerning the engine's custody in 1970, they brought the engine to Atlanta via the former Atlanta, Knoxville and Northern Railway line from Knoxville through Etowah, to Marietta, bypassing Chattanooga. In February 1972, a ceremony was held in Atlanta where L&N president Kendall form...
The Pine series was a fleet of sleeping cars built by Pullman-Standard in 1953. The cars were built according to Pullman plan 4183; each contained six sections, six roomettes and four double bedrooms (colloquially "6-6-4"). The cars were originally owned by the Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N), the Chicago and E...
The Louisville and Nashville Railroad (L&N) ordered 22 of the cars in 1951, primarily to replace the pre-World War II heavyweight cars on the "Pan American", "Humming Bird", and "Georgian". Each car cost $163,000. Additional orders were placed by the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad (C&EI) (four cars) and Nashvill...
The NC&StL's three cars became part of the L&N's fleet in August 1957 on the merger of the two railroads. All of the cars were retired in 1971 on the formation of Amtrak and the end of passenger service on the L&N. Several later saw service on the original Auto-Train.
All 29 cars were part of Pullman Lot 6909:
Several Pine series sleeping cars are known to exist, including at least one in operating condition:
The Troy and New England Railway Company was an electric trolley that operated between Averill Park and Albia (in Troy, New York). Riders could pick up the trolley from Troy's city trolley. It operated around 1895 to 1925. James K. Averill had this line established, with the intention to extending the route to Pittsfie...
Its route essentially paralleled the Wynantskill Creek and then West Sand Lake Road from Albia to Sand Lake. There were stops at several places, including Brookside Avenue, Sand Lake Road at Steamview Lane, and at Sagendorf Lane.
The trolley cars were open sided in the summer and windowed side cars were used during the winter months. Flatcars and box cars were used to transport freight. The cars were powered by an overhead wire that connected to electric motors within the trolley. Trolleys ran from 5:30 in the morning until midnight. Children t...
Starting in 1902, the trolley ran on coal-fired steam electricity generated at a local power plant. Troy and New England Railway was purchased by United Traction Company in 1910. By 1916, Delaware and Hudson Company had a controlling interest in United Traction Company and the Troy and New England Railway.
The New Orleans, Texas and Mexico Railway was a constituent element of the Missouri-Pacific Railroad.
H.E. Salzberg Company was a scrap dealer and operator of a group of shortline railroads and bus lines throughout the eastern United States. Headquartered in New York City, the company was primarily in the business of dismantling abandoned railroads and processing the valuable steel rails for scrap. The company was foun...
H. E. Salzberg & Company, Inc. incorporated under the laws of the State of New York in 1918.
Each year, Syracuse University's Whitman School of Management presents the Salzberg Medallion, a prestigious award in the transportation and supply chain management industry. The award was established in 1949 by Murray Salzberg to honor his father's transportation career.
A catcher pouch was a mail bag used by Railway Post Offices of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century. Its use was limited to exchanges onto moving trains. The specially constructed catcher pouch was grabbed by the catcher mechanism in the passing railway car and the catcher pouch would release from the...
When the mail clerk of the Railway Post Office car grabbed the catcher pouch on the mail crane he would at the same time kick out the outgoing mail for delivery to that village. The idea behind the catcher pouch was that there could be an exchange of mail to villages too small to justify the train stopping. The complet...
The mail on-the-fly was not a smooth operating technique. One problem with the technique was that the postal clerk had to pay close attention when he raised the train's catcher arm. If it was raised too early there was a chance of hitting and destroying switch targets, telegraph poles, and railway semaphore signals, as...
In the United Kingdom as early as 1855 an apparatus for snatching mailbags on-the-fly and delivering mail without stopping a train was in use at Slough, England. It continued in service until 1939.
A mail hook is an installation alongside a railroad where a catcher pouch can be hung, to be picked up by a passing train without the train having to stop.
Catcher pouches could not be used for any other purpose. The catcher pouch was to be used only for letters (sometimes newspapers were an exception). The maximum weight of a filled catcher pouch was to be 50 pounds. The catcher pouch was to be locked and placed upside down on the mail crane no sooner than 10 minutes bef...
The catcher pouch is a specialized form of sack made of an extra tough canvas material and had metal rings on each end so they could attach to the arm of a railway mail bag crane. The body of the pouch was strengthened by leather bindings both at the top and bottom. A Registered Mail pouch came also with a leather bott...
Rail transportation in the United States consists primarily of freight shipments, with a well integrated network of standard gauge private freight railroads extending into Canada and Mexico. Passenger service is mainly mass transit and commuter rail in major cities. Intercity passenger service, once a large and vital p...
A railroad was reportedly used in the construction of the French Royal Army fortress at Louisburg, Nova Scotia in 1720. Between 1762 and 1764, at the close of the French and Indian War, a gravity railroad (mechanized tramway) (Montresor's Tramway) was built by British Army engineers up the steep riverside terrain near ...
State governments granted charters that created the business corporation and gave a limited right of eminent domain, allowing the railroad to buy needed land, even if the owner objected.
The first purpose-built common carrier railroad in the northeast was the Mohawk & Hudson Railroad; incorporated in 1826, it began operating in August 1831. Soon, a second passenger line, the Saratoga & Schenectady Railroad, started service in June 1832.
In 1835 the B&O completed a branch from Baltimore southward to Washington, D.C. The Boston & Providence Railroad was incorporated in 1831 to build a railroad between Boston, Massachusetts and Providence, Rhode Island; the road was completed in 1835 with the completion of the Canton Viaduct in Canton, Massachusetts.
Numerous short lines were built, especially in the south, to provide connections to the river systems and the river boats common to the era. In Louisiana, the Pontchartrain Rail-Road, a route connecting the Mississippi River with Lake Pontchartrain at New Orleans was completed in 1831 and provided over a century of ope...
Soon, other roads that would themselves be purchased or merged into larger entities, formed. The Camden & Amboy Railroad (C&A), the first railroad built in New Jersey, completed its route between its namesake cities in 1834. The C&A ran successfully for decades connecting New York City to the Delaware valley, and would...
By 1850, over of railroad lines had been built. The B&O's westward route reached the Ohio River in 1852, the first eastern seaboard railroad to do so. Railroad companies in the North and Midwest constructed networks that linked nearly every major city by 1860.
Much of the original roadbed is still in use today and owned by UP, which is descended from both of the original railroads.
Many Canadian and U.S. railroads originally used various broad gauges, but most were converted to by 1886, when the conversion of much of the southern rail network from gauge took place. This and the standardization of couplings and air brakes enabled the pooling and interchange of locomotives and rolling stock.
The railroad had its largest impact on the American transportation system during the second half of the 19th century. The standard historical interpretation holds that the railroads were central to the development of a national market in the United States and served as a model of how to organize, finance and manage a l...
Fogel concludes that railroads were important but not "essential" to late 19th century growth in the U.S. in the sense that a possible alternative existed even if it was never tried. Fogel focuses on the "social saving" created by railroads, which he defines as the difference between the actual level of national income...
Fishlow estimates that the railroad's social savings—or what he terms "direct benefits"—were higher than those calculated by Fogel. Fishlow's research may indicate that the development of railroads significantly influenced real income in the United States. Instead of Fogel's term "social saving", Fishlow uses the term ...
Industrialists such as Cornelius Vanderbilt and Jay Gould became wealthy through railroad ownerships, as large railroad companies such as the New York Central, Grand Trunk Railway and the Southern Pacific spanned several states. In response to monopolistic practices (such as price fixing) and other excesses of some rai...
As early as the 1930s, automobile travel had begun to cut into the rail passenger market, somewhat reducing economies of scale, but it was the development of the Interstate Highway System and of commercial aviation in the 1950s and 1960s, as well as increasingly restrictive regulation, that dealt the most damaging blow...
Freight transportation continued to labor under regulations developed when rail transport had a monopoly on intercity traffic, and railroads only competed with one another. An entire generation of rail managers had been trained to operate under this regulatory regime. Labor unions and their work rules were likewise a f...
Historically, on routes where a single railroad has had an undisputed monopoly, passenger service was as spartan and as expensive as the market and ICC regulation would bear, since such railroads had no need to advertise their freight services. However, on routes where two or three railroads were in direct competition ...
The National Association of Railroad Passengers (NARP) was formed in 1967 to lobby for the continuation of passenger trains. Its lobbying efforts were hampered somewhat by Democratic opposition to any sort of rail subsidies to the privately owned railroads, and Republican opposition to nationalization of the railroad i...
Under the Rail Passenger Service Act of 1970, Congress created the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (NRPC) to subsidize and oversee the operation of intercity passenger trains. The Act provided that
The original working brand name for NRPC was "Railpax", which eventually became "Amtrak". At the time, many Washington insiders viewed the corporation as a face-saving way to give passenger trains the one "last hurrah" demanded by the public, but expected that the NRPC would quietly disappear in a few years as public i...
Similarly, to preserve a declining freight rail industry, Congress passed the Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973 (sometimes called the "3R Act"). The act was an attempt to salvage viable freight operations from the bankrupt Penn Central and other lines in the northeast, mid-Atlantic and Midwestern regions. The la...
The freight industry continued its decline until Congress passed the Staggers Rail Act in 1980, which largely deregulated the rail industry. Since then, U.S. freight railroads have reorganized, discontinued their lightly used routes and returned to profitability.
Freight railroads play an important role in the U.S. economy, especially for moving imports and exports using containers, and for shipments of coal and oil. According to the British news magazine "The Economist," "They are universally recognised in the industry as the best in the world." Productivity rose 172% between ...
U.S. freight railroads are separated into three classes, set by the Surface Transportation Board, based on annual revenues:
In 2013, the U.S. moved more oil out of North Dakota by rail than by the Trans-Alaska pipeline. This trend—tenfold in two years and 40-fold in five years—is forecast to increase.
There are four different classes of freight railroads: Class I, regional, local line haul, and switching & terminal. Class I railroads are defined as those with revenue of at least $346.8 million in 2006. They comprise just one percent of the number of freight railroads, but account for 67 percent of the industry's mil...
A regional railroad is a line haul railroad with at least and/or revenue between $40 million and the Class I threshold. There were 33 regional railroads in 2006. Most have between 75 and 500 employees.
Local line haul railroads operate less than and earn less than $40 million per year (most earn less than $5 million per year). In 2006, there were 323 local line haul railroads. They generally perform point-to-point service over short distances.
Switching and terminal (S&T) carriers are railroads that primarily provide switching and/or terminal services, regardless of revenue. They perform pick up and delivery services within a certain area.
U.S. freight railroads operate in a highly competitive marketplace. In 2011, within the U.S., railroads carried 39.9% of freight by ton-mile, followed by trucks (33.4%), oil pipelines (14.3%), barges (12%) and air (0.3%). However, railroads' revenue share has been slowly falling for decades, a reflection of the intensi...
Prior to Amtrak's creation in 1970, intercity passenger rail service in the U.S. was provided by the same companies that provided freight service. When Amtrak was formed, in return for government permission to exit the passenger rail business, freight railroads donated passenger equipment to Amtrak and helped it get st...
The vast majority of the 22,000 or so miles over which Amtrak operates are actually owned by freight railroads. By law, freight railroads must grant Amtrak access to their track upon request. In return, Amtrak pays fees to freight railroads to cover the incremental costs of Amtrak's use of freight railroad tracks.

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