Prototype News

Flash floods that spread across the area surrounding Rochester, N.Y., on the evening of June 18 caused extensive damage to the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum right-of-way. The storm, which dumped more than seven inches of rain in less than three hours, also washed out tracks on the neighboring Livonia, Avon & Lakeville Railroad near Avon, temporarily stranding the daily road freight just a mile south of the museum until the tracks could be cleared the next day.

While the full extent of flood damage is still being assessed by museum volunteers, several areas of the railbed appeared to be compromised enough to warrant the cancellation of public train ride events through the end of July. According to museum officials, there was no damage to locomotives, rolling stock, or the restored 1909 Erie Railroad depot at Industry. Museum volunteers are partnering with engineering firms and New York State DOT to plan a course of action to effect repairs so the museum can resume train rides as soon as possible. The museum’s railroad is built on a mile-and-a-half of private right-of-way in the rural town of Rush, just 12 miles south of Rochester.

“As a nonprofit, all-volunteer organization, we rely on ticket sales to support our mission. However, the safety of our guests, volunteers, and equipment must always come first,” the museum said in a prepared statement, “We appreciate your patience, understanding, and continued support as we work to restore operations and preserve Rochester’s rich railroading heritage for generations to come.”

Founded in 1971, the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum is the largest operating railroad museum in New York State. Donations can be made at www.rgvrrm.org/donate

—Railfan & Railroad staff

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Amtrak’s newest trains are set to debut on the Cascades route between Eugene, Ore., and Vancouver, B.C., in 2026, according to the railroad. Amtrak recently shared images showcasing both the interior and exterior of the new trains being constructed by Siemens Mobility in California.

Siemens is currently constructing 83 dual-powered train sets for the Northeast Corridor and state-supported services nationwide. These new trains will replace Amtrak-owned Amfleet, Metroliner, and state-owned equipment across the country, which is now nearly 50 years old. The trainsets will be paired with Siemens Charger locomotives. The first units will enter service in the Cascades, which will receive eight new trainsets and two new locomotives next year. —Justin Franz 

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At one time, most major cities in North America had grand passenger stations. Their architecture varied; some had soaring canopies of glass and iron, some the form of Greek temples or Roman baths, and some were mock Jacobean great houses or pretend Parisian palaces. Such structures, then, were about more than efficiency — they were about making a statement, a vast sign that said something like, “Behold, traveler; the Railroad resides here.”

Of course, this is a chapter from the past. Publicly subsidized highways, the introduction of the commercial jetliner, and changing patterns of travel all hit the railways hard. By the late 1960s, cities that once saw hundreds of trains per day were reduced to seeing one or two; meanwhile, some secondary routes were greatly reduced, quite often to none. Many stations closed, and Amtrak, which resumed responsibility for most long-distance services in 1971, had little need for expansive urban stations. All too often our grand downtown edifices were closed, many meeting the wrecking ball.

A select few survive to this day, still serving Amtrak’s passenger trains on a daily or better basis. My favorites are all “union stations,” buildings constructed by several railroads to consolidate urban services into a single, convenient location. My favorite is probably Portland, Ore., the station of my youth, but I also love three others — Los Angeles; St. Paul, Minn.; and Chicago. Each is a beautiful example of railroad architecture at its peak.

This stated, each also has its flaws. Portland’s is a cramped and confusing combination of an 1890s Romanesque Revival exterior and a 1920s Art Deco interior. St. Paul’s is located in, well, St. Paul, rather than in the more populous Minneapolis. Los Angeles is a beautiful 1930s combination of Mission Revival and Art Deco, but remains an inefficient stub terminal design — a problem to be fixed by Metrolink at a cost of $2 billion.

And then there’s Chicago. Planned and directed by Pennsylvania Railroad, Chicago Union Station opened in 1925. The Windy City’s Union Station remains impressive outside, with its long colonnaded façade; inside, its main hall with its 219-foot-high ceiling is as breathtaking as the day it opened. The scale of things, with its hulking interior columns, is more than a classical revival fantasy, it is a powerful expression of Chicago’s robust, monumental architectural character. Yet, over time, the station has also suffered. Metra and Amtrak must cooperate in this bustling shared space. Its passenger concourse has been rebuilt several times since 1969, and today remains a cramped, maze-like space that makes the seasoned traveler sigh, “Well, at least it’s not New York Penn Station.”

Still, it is a minor miracle that so much of what is good about the station remains intact. Relatively few of its companions in Chicago survive unscathed; Chicago & North Western’s nearby Beaux-Arts edifice, for example, was razed for an office tower in 1984, with the station operations shoved into an uninspired glass box at the tower’s base. Given the location in the heart of the city, proposals to build an office tower atop Union Station show up from time to time — Amtrak itself proposed such a thing in 2017 — but so far, each has faded after a short flurry of press. For now, it is possible, as one critic once said of New York’s long-departed Pennsylvania Station, to “enter the city like a god” — at least, if you can find your way up into the reception halls from the concourse. There, among columns larger than redwoods, and roofed in under vast skylights, there remains that sense of wonder that rail travel once instilled.

—Alexander Benjamin Craghead is a transportation historian, photographer, artist, and author.

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By Nick Benson/photos by the author

It was October 2016, and I had a hot tip that Canadian Pacific’s business train, in Minneapolis for the Ryder Cup, would be returning to Calgary. Time has made a few details fuzzy, but it lingered near the Twin Cities early in the day, a fortuitous courtesy that allowed the autumnal sun to swing into position and collude with vibrant blue skies. CP had done all of the gathered railfans a favor by providing a consist right out of a Lionel catalog — A-B-A F-units and a healthy consist of matching Tuscan passenger cars. I followed that train for 175 rail miles into the sunset, fortunate to be the last foamer standing as I set up my panning rig for one final shot of 4107 as it passed through the hamlet of Oswald, N.D. I’ve had no shortage of fun railroad photography experiences, but that day I clearly remember thinking this will be a top-ten lifetime chase.

Another memorable day trackside that stands out, even more than a dozen years later, was one spent chasing Union Pacific’s Job 23, which operates out of New Prague, Minn., on one of the few segments of Minneapolis & St. Louis that wasn’t ripped up in the 1980s after becoming redundant by the many mergers of Chicago & North Western and its successors. It was classic Midwestern branch line railroading — a standard-cab EMD delivering a handful of cars to a mill and a vegetable cannery. A little off the beaten path, running only on weekdays, and something that’d “always be there,” it was largely overlooked by my fellow railfans. Fortunately, I caught it in beautiful weather and spent several hours following it through the modest scenery of southern Minnesota, catching it passing a depot (the crew invited me in for a tour), an apple orchard, several farms, and even the local grocery store, where the crew stopped to grab refreshments. The mill has since closed, relegating the former week-daily job to as-needed, making it even more challenging to document. I strive to get out and spend a day capturing fall color each year, but meeting the high expectations I set that day in 2012 is tough.

Autumn Colors Express
In 2019, I was fortunate to be chosen as a volunteer staff photographer for the revived passenger excursions through the New River Gorge in West Virginia, marketed at the time as the Autumn Colors Express. The train consisted of 21 private cars and was assembled in Chicago, where I met it, and we deadheaded down to West Virginia. On our way to Huntington, I enjoyed a wonderful dinner with a musician aboard the Super Dome. I had been told who he was, but I hadn’t heard of him and was too bashful to ask for clarification. In any event, after dinner, we all gathered in Skytop Lounge Cedar Rapids, where the musician would be performing an acoustic concert for the crew under the beautiful glass solarium. As he played, a lightbulb went off when I recognized several of his songs — he was Glen Phillips, lead singer of the legendary ’90s alt-rock band Toad the Wet Sprocket. Why he was aboard exactly, I still don’t know, but he hopped off to much adoration in Indianapolis, and I was left scratching my head. Had that really just happened?

There were three days of excursions, which I spent roaming the train documenting as much as I could — car interiors, staff loading and unloading supplies and passengers, people getting haircuts en route in the salon, folks enjoying the Railroad Days festival in Hinton, breakfast prep in Chairman’s Class’s kitchen, a newly engaged couple, people enjoying themselves in the domes and lounges. It was a fun assignment.

My home that week was the ex-Frisco sleeping car Cimarron River, and two of the nights were spent on the move to or from Chicago, hot on the heels of Amtrak’s Cardinal. On the return deadhead move I stayed up late, a fly on the wall listening to amusing stories of rival Milwaukee Road and Soo Line preservationists, before returning to my roomette and being rocked to sleep. It was a short night, though; I woke up at dawn and had the train to myself, as the vast majority of the staff slept in, too exhausted to enjoy an Indiana sunrise. I once again found myself in Cedar Rapids, just me and my camera, our silhouette projected by early light on the passing scenery. The photographic finale happened as we arrived in Chicago and were pulled through the wash rack — the colors and water splashing off designer Brooks Stevens’ handiwork were breathtaking.

ABOVE: Berk excitedly points out an approaching BNSF train from the window of Northstar, as his younger brother Lucas looks on, from our ride in 2015. Ten years later we’d ride again, and this time they were the ones taking most of the pictures.

Family Foaming
It wasn’t an obvious highlight to my thick skull, but in retrospect some of my best times trackside were just normal days hanging out with the family. We rode the caboose at Jackson Street Roundhouse in St. Paul, the trolleys at the Minnesota Streetcar Museum, and the North Pole Express at St. Paul Union Depot. We made several trackside trips, just out to see the usual day-to-day traffic, often with a stroller safely perched on an overpass.

Milwaukee Road 261’s fall color trips, often coincident with my oldest son’s birthday, became an annual family tradition. The relaxed pace and scheduled stops make it an easy chase. The kids are old enough to take photos on their own now, but I got them started by getting my cameras pointed at the right spot and handing over the shutter release cable. There’s nothing more compelling to a child than pushing a button, especially if it’s connected to one of Dad’s prized gizmos and produces a great photo that they took all by themselves. My three children are growing up fast and enjoy visual arts. Mila, the youngest, is generally more interested in arts and crafts, usually things that don’t have wheels. Berk and Lucas, on the other hand, have my affliction for transportation photography, especially of planes and trains. As a parent, it’s fun seeing the boys following in my footsteps directly, and so interesting to see my daughter applying the mechanical aptitude she inherited from me as an ability to paint, sculpt, and craft so creatively.

These days we probably aren’t getting out to document railroads as much as we ought to — our time is usually spent on aviation now — but the boys and I recently took a trip on our local commuter railroad, Northstar, an out-and-back from Minneapolis to Big Lake. Unfortunately, our local commuter rail is a victim of poor implementation, lack of support from several communities served, and lingering effects from pandemic restrictions. It sounds like Northstar’s days are numbered now, and we needed to get out and ride it again before it was gone.

It was fun to see the boys, who were grooving on riding a train 10 years ago, now excited by photographic opportunities, looking for interesting reflections, framing devices, dragging the shutter to get motion blur, lying on the ground to get a more dramatic angle, noticing station signs that provide context, and chatting up the crew to get better access. I found myself having more fun watching them take pictures than being the photographer myself. Did I just discover what it means to be a parent?

The Oblivious
Lord willing, I have plenty of years and chases left in the hopper, but I am as confident today as I was nearly a decade ago that it’ll be tough to top that perfect chase of the CP office car train. You needn’t spend much time trackside to appreciate the confluence of light, power, and scenery. But as I sit here now, 40 years old, realizing time slips by faster than most of us younger are capable of acknowledging, there’s something to appreciate about the ordinary time trackside, especially if friends and family are involved.

Without straying too far into contemplative reflection and nostalgia, our time here is ephemeral, and as everyone learns as the years go by, none of us are guaranteed another tomorrow. Just as our favorite railroads, equipment, and industries morph as time passes, children grow, friendships change — the special people in our lives aren’t always going to be able to go on that next chase, or be waiting for us when we get home a few hours late because the light was so good.

While chasing a perfect westbound into the sunset can be a self-evident photographic triumph, embarrassingly, it wasn’t obvious to me how good things were when I was spending time with my family chasing Milwaukee 261 on its fall color trips, or loading up the stroller at Union Depot ahead of a walk up the Kellogg Boulevard overpass to appreciate the usual parade of traffic passing below us. It should have been obvious, of course; I fondly remember “checking the crossing” at Talmage Avenue with my dad when I was young, forming core memories of watching Burlington Northern and Soo Line rumble past, and learning how to be a good father myself.

I wish it’d been more obvious to me how great it was — perhaps I ought to appreciate how good it still is.

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by Andrew Cox/photos by the author

Seattle’s waterfront dates to the late 1880s, when the city was just a small lumber and mineral town on the shores of Puget Sound. In the early years, Seattle grew slowly with few settlers reaching the unknown waterfront town, tucked away in a remote corner of Washington Territory. Logging camps in the western Cascades used the Duwamish River, Mount Rainier’s western drainage, to shuttle timber to a developing waterfront market. In 1897, however, the Klondike Gold Rush in Alaska and Canada’s Yukon Region completely changed the trajectory of Seattle’s development. Similar to the effect that the California Gold Rush had on the rise of San Francisco and Sacramento, Seattle’s waterfront exploded into a metropolis that served as a jumping-off point for prospectors hoping to strike it rich on the frontier. Suddenly, a prosperous city resided on the tide flats of Elliott Bay where the Duwamish River flowed into Puget Sound, and with it came the railroads.

The turn of the century could not have been any better for railroads that began gobbling up access to the waterfront. By 1911, Seattle hosted two downtown depots serving four transcontinental railroads. Northern Pacific and Great Northern shared a depot on King Street while The Milwaukee Road and Union Pacific built an ornate station just a block east. All four had dedicated trackage, with NP dominating the waterfront. Just a few blocks west of the two downtown depots, and down a very steep grade, NP and GN jockeyed for trackage along Seattle’s Railroad Avenue district, serving several docks and wharfs. Northern Pacific built a yard and port access on marshlands south of downtown, now known as SODO (SOuth of DOwntown). Just north of downtown, GN built a large yard and roundhouse between Magnolia and Queen Anne neighborhoods, calling it Interbay Yard. Union Pacific set up shop a few miles south of downtown at Argo Yard which has remained under UP control to this day.

ABOVE: Harbor Island offers an unusual opportunity to see BNSF and Union Pacific working side by side. Take this cold morning of February 5, 2024, for example, as BNSF spots loads at Shell Oil while UP shoves reefers for PCC Logistics and custom loads for the Alaska barge. The cement hoppers are just along for the ride, as they’ll be switched at Ash Grove Cement just off the island.

The growth of Seattle’s waterfront coincided with the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, causing several West Coast ports to modernize and expand their ability to handle anticipated surges in marine traffic on a global scale. The two world wars further spurred growth in Puget Sound with the addition of shipyards and steel mills, all served by the railroads. During summer 1964, GN would contract with Alaska Railroad out of Whittier, Alaska, to provide the nation’s first permanent rail-barge interchange between Alaska and the lower 48. To this day, Alaska Railroad operates weekly barge service to Seattle, making it the longest rail/barge transfer in the U.S.

By 1970, the great consolidation of America’s railroads was in full swing. In Seattle, GN and NP — along with Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and Spokane, Portland & Seattle — had merged to form Burlington Northern. The Milwaukee Road was on its way out, and had shifted its traffic to Tacoma; it would abandon its western route altogether in 1980. Three miles south of downtown, Union Pacific was still working its own trackage at Argo Yard, a small blip in the far northwest reaches of UP’s western division. The Emerald City, which had once hosted four of the nation’s premier railroads, was now blanketed in a sea of Cascade Green and just a touch of Armour Yellow.

ABOVE: The afternoon barge job has just started work on Harbor Island, delicately shoving its first cut of cars onto the barge under cloudy skies on November 1, 2023. The unique vantage point is thanks to a pedestrian overpass connecting Vigor Shipyards to its employee parking lot.

In the 21st century, BNSF has emerged as the primary operator in the Pacific Northwest. Seattle continues to host a thriving network of international trade, making it the ninth-largest port in the world. In 2022, the port of Seattle handled 3.4 million “TEUs” (20-foot container equivalent unit), 20 percent of which moved by rail. Seattle’s geographic positioning on the globe provides the shortest distance from seaports in Asia to the continental U.S. It is also the shortest distance between a West Coast port and Chicago, where both domestic traffic and marine traffic splinter off to markets farther east. It’s not just container traffic that keeps the Seattle waterfront humming; Seattle ports moved 3.5 million metric tons of agricultural products for export in 2023, consisting mostly of grain and soybeans, much of which was brought to Seattle on unit trains.

Harbor Island
In 1907, Puget Sound Bridge & Dredging Company embarked on a world-record-setting project in the southwest corner of Elliott Bay and metropolitan Seattle. Over the course of two years, the dredging company would forever change the geography of Seattle’s waterfront by splitting the Duwamish River into separate eastern and western waterways. Twenty-four million cubic yards of dirt from regrading projects in the city and dredged material from Seattle’s tide flats would create Harbor Island, at the time the world’s largest man-made island.

ABOVE: A mild winter’s sunrise casts long shadows across Harbor Island and BNSF organizing a cut of freshly delivered barge cars on January 15, 2025. Next, the railroad will deliver a fresh cut of loaded petroleum tanks to both Shell and ARCO tank farms seen in the distance on both sides of the yard.

Early industrial and commercial use of the island consisted of fish processing facilities, shipyards, and industries such as flour mills, grain elevators, lumber yards, and cold storage, primarily located on the island’s eastern shore. Commercial and industrial development continued after the 1940s, including oil terminals, shipyards, rail transfer terminals, and sand and gravel transfer stations. The first industry to occupy the island was Fisher Flouring Mills, which began milling grain in 1911. Served by NP, the towering grain silos of Fisher defined the western half of Harbor Island’s skyline. At the time, it was the largest grain mill in the western U.S., and was known locally for its scones and quality malt for scotch. The mill even had ties to famous Northwest bootlegger Roy Olmstead, who supposedly used Fisher’s milled grain to produce his infamous hooch.

Today, Harbor Island trackage is served by both Union Pacific and BNSF. The busiest location on the island is the 196-acre Terminal 18 that runs almost the entire length of Harbor Island’s east side and is jointly operated by both railroads. The 420-acre island is home to about 50 active businesses, six of which are served by rail. Two petroleum tank farms, Ray-Mont Logistics, Westway Feed Products, and Pacific Coast Container (PCC) complete the industrial leads. The large and very active Vigor Shipyard on the northwest corner of Harbor Island sadly no longer takes rail service at any of its leads. However, it does provide services for Washington state’s world-class fleet of passenger and car ferries…

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by Justin Franz/photos as noted

Chicago Union Station. Trains Editor David P. Morgan once compared it to a holy place of worship, and if Chicago is America’s railroad capital, then Union Station would undoubtedly be a fitting National Cathedral.

Outside, set against a backdrop of towering glass skyscrapers, Union Station’s stone pillars resemble something from the Roman Empire. Embedded in the high cornerstones are clocks announcing Elgin – Central Time, a nod to the railroad watchmaker located northwest of the city and the railroad’s impact on establishing time zones. In the glass windows are the names of the railroads that built and once served this storied terminal: Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific; Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; Pennsylvania Railroad’s subsidiaries Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis and Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne & Chicago; and the tiny Chicago & Alton, which didn’t have an ownership stake but was a tenant of the others.

But beyond those heavy doors along South Canal Street lies the real magic. Inside the Great Hall, light from the towering barrel-vaulted skylight illuminates one of railroading’s finest spaces. The concrete pillars of the exterior have been replaced with towering marble ones that encircle the 20,972-square-foot space. Atop the pillars are intricate stone carvings, and on two are statues by American sculptor Henry Hering titled “Day” and “Night.” One figure holds an owl, while the other has a rooster, an unsubtle reference to the night-and-day pace of railroading. But perhaps the most important statue of all is also the simplest — a gold-plated post in the middle of the hall with a sign that reads “To Trains.” While the Great Hall is a setting fit for a papal conclave, the real action takes place one story below on the platforms.

ABOVE: Pennsylvania and Chicago, Burlington & Quincy trains mingle on the south side of Chicago Union Station in this August 1964 scene. This view would be all but impossible to capture now because it is covered by a building (not to mention that the photographer has wandered well beyond the platform to capture it). —John E. Gruber photo, Center for Railroad Art & Photography collection

A century after the completion of Chicago Union Station, this grand building continues to serve as the beating heart of railroading in the American Heartland. From here, more than 20,000 Amtrak trains and 77,000 Metra commuter trains arrive or depart annually (not counting position moves), carrying more than 38 million passengers each year.

Simply put, 100 years after it opened, the excitement and drama of railroading are still being preached from this storied space in the heart of America’s railroad capital.

‘The World’s Foremost Terminal’
In 1897, English journalist G.W. Steevens summarized the chaos of Chicago like this: “Chicago! Chicago, queen and guttersnipe of cities, cynosure and cesspool of the world! Not if I had a hundred tongues, everyone shouting a different language in a different key, could I do justice for her splendid chaos. The most beautiful and the most squalid. The most American of cities. Where in all the world can words be found for such paradox and incongruity? Someday, Chicago will turn her savagery into order and cooperation and she will become the greatest, as already she is the most amazing city in the world.”

ABOVE: In the morning and evening, Chicago Union Station is a scene of constant movement, with passengers rushing to and from their trains and with trains arriving and departing from multiple tracks at once. Passengers are waiting for a Metra train to pull in from the Roosevelt Road coach yard on the afternoon of April 17, 2019. With the exception of the Metra logos on the sides of these gallery cars, this scene has changed little in the last few decades. —Todd Halamka photo

While Steevens mused on the city itself, the passage also described its chaotic web of railroads. Chicago became the crossroads of American railroading due to its geography; on one side, it had easy access to the shipping lanes of the Great Lakes, and on the other, flat and fertile land ideal for railroad construction. The city’s first railroad was Galena & Chicago Union (predecessor to Chicago & North Western), built to connect lead mines in the northwest corner of the state with the Great Lakes. In fall 1848, the railroad opened Chicago’s first station, a simple wooden structure not far from the Chicago River, west of what is now Canal Street and south of Kinzie Street. In the decades that followed the construction of Galena & Chicago Union, the Windy City became a spiderweb of rail lines with routes converging on the metropolis from nearly every direction.

By the 20th century, more than two dozen railroads were operating on thousands of miles of track within the city. To accommodate the hundreds of passenger trains and tens of thousands of riders who arrived or departed from downtown Chicago every day, six major stations were constructed: Central, Dearborn, Grand Central, LaSalle, Chicago & North Western, and Union Depot. The cluster of depots around downtown meant that if you were traveling through Chicago, you not only had to change trains but also probably had to go to an entirely different station. That wasn’t the only issue facing the city at the turn of the 20th century, however.

ABOVE: The exterior of Union Station on South Canal Street is lit up on the evening of April 18, 2011. —Otto M. Vondrak photo

In 1906, the Merchants Club hired architect Daniel H. Burnham (who, a decade earlier, had designed Chicago’s 1893 World’s Fair) to create a plan to improve the city. The result was the 1909 Plan of Chicago, one of the country’s first major city planning documents, which called for new and wider streets, parks, civic buildings, and improved harbor and railroad facilities, most notably consolidating the six stations into one, ideally west of the Chicago River.

While the 1909 Plan of Chicago suggested a different location for this centralized station, the most logical choice was near Union Depot (opened in 1882), primarily because it wouldn’t require major track changes on the north and south approaches. Union Depot had been utilized by Pennsylvania; Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul; Chicago & Alton; and Chicago, Burlington & Quincy. By the 1910s, however, it often became overcrowded and could not meet the demands of a growing city. In 1913, the Chicago Union Station Company was incorporated to construct a new Union Station. The company’s stock was divided among Pennsylvania, Milwaukee, and Burlington, although Pennsy was the dominant player. J.J. Turner, vice president of Pennsylvania Lines West, was named the company’s first president. Graham, Anderson, Probst & White was hired to design the new station; the firm was led by Ernest Graham, who had been a business partner of Burnham, who passed away in 1912, three years after his Plan of Chicago was released…

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