Links current as of January 16, 2007:
Search Engines and Directories
Suggested Sites
Just a few possibilities out of the thousands out there, culled from Google and other sources. List may expand as time goes by and I review more sites!
- Trains Portal (Wikipedia) — From here may be accessed many articles in the encyclopedia on trains and rail transport. Consider it the Grand Central Station for railroad information on Wikipedia.
- History of Railroads and Maps (Library of Congress)
- Abandoned Railroads of the US
- Confederate Railroads
- Railfan.net — Claims 700,000 railroad images; regularly updated, with links to many sites and hosted sites.
- Station 29: Canadian Pacific Railway logo history — Hard-to-find page at the CPR site, explaining the evolution of their logo.
- RailWiki — operated by the writer of TrainBlog (see below)
Michigan Central Station, Battle Creek, Mich.
As I noted on the previous page, my interest in railroads began when I took a train trip to Kalamazoo from Battle Creek, the nearest station to my school. We left from the Michigan Central station in downtown Battle Creek. Courtesy of Battle Creek’s Willard Library, here is a collection of pictures of the old pile, one of the classic Victorian beauties of its age, as well as other photos from the Grand Trunk station across town. (Grand Trunk was the other line that served the very busy town, between shipping cereal and farm goods from the area, and bringing in passengers bound to take the waters at the Battle Creek Sanitarium under Dr. John Harvey Kellogg.) Fortunately, a whole bunch of sensible people preserved the MC station, which sits just below the library on the hill near McCamly Street. While trains no longer stop there (Amtrak stops at a new intermodal station farther south on Capital Ave.), the building is put to good use as one of the Clara’s restaurants built in old southern Michigan rail stations.
More information and photos on Battle Creek and Michigan rail in general can be found at michiganrailroads.com.
The Pennsylvania Railroad
The Pennsylvania Railroad was one of the two Northeast powerhouses, in a duel to the death with the New York Central — until the two decided to merge in the sixties, and the resulting Penn Central sunk in the nation’s then biggest bankruptcy two years later. It billed itself in its heyday as “The Standard Railroad of the World,” and handled itself as a trendsetter; it built much of its equipment in house instead of ordering it from other locomotive builders, etc. Its long history and its trains make the story of the PRR one to conjure with for railfans.
Some Current North American Railroads
These sites often have a history page associated with them, and sometimes a “company store” where you can buy goodies emblazoned with historical logos, etc.
- Burlington Northern Santa Fe
- CSX
- Union Pacific
- Canadian National
- Norfolk Southern
- Union Pacific
- Canadian Pacific
Magazines
- Railfan and Railroad
- Trains.com — 5 different magazines for big, garden and model railroad fans
Radio Scanning
In the old days, orders were passed to trains at stations, often by passing the flimsies of telegraphed instructions to the engineers and conductors on the end of poles they snagged in motion — one reason, according to an author, for the number of small and back-woods stations across the country. With the advent of radio communications and centralized train control, orders could be passed directly to the train — at the expense, of course, of many small stations.
The orders are on open radio, and can be listened to with standard police-radio scanners programmed to (or with crystals for) the correct frequencies. In the days of the Internet, many railfans stream the audio, which can be listened to with players such as Winamp or Real.
