Favorite US Railroad?

Favorite RRs

1. Norfolk Southern
2. Seaboard System
3. CSX
4. BNSF
5. Southern Pacific
6. Denver & Rio Grande Western
7. Montana Rail Link
 
1.Amtrak
2.BNSF
3.ATSF
4.BN
5.WC
6.MRL
7.UP
8.SP
9.CSX
10.NS
11.Conrail
12.IC
13.Ohio Central System
14.P&W
15.Weyerhaeuser's Columbia & Cowlitz
16.Weyerhaeuser RR
 
If it hauled coal and ran east of the Mississippi... ?

In no particular order...

Chessie System (B&O/C&O/WM) - introduced me to trains in the 1970's. I had a relative who worked for C&O. Western Maryland was just AWESOME! The perfect line. And I grew up along the B&O, which was also conveniently on the Monopoly board.

New York Susquehanna & Western (Susquehanna)
New York Ontario & Western
CNO&TP/Cincinnati Southern - Not just my semi-fictional RR, but the real RR owned by the City of Cincinnati. The best 338 miles of the Southern.
Cincinnati & Lake Erie
Clinchfield
Pittsburgh & Lake Erie
Bessemer & Lake Erie
Lehigh & New England
Lehigh & Hudson River
Delaware Lackawanna & Western
Erie
Chicago & Illinois Midland
Virginian
Lehigh & Susquehanna
Pittsburgh & West Virginia
Wheeling & Lake Erie
TTI
Buffalo Rochester & Pittsburgh/B&P
Paducah & Louisville
Maryland Midland
D&RGW (standard gauge only, thank you)
CTH&SE and its successor, the Indiana Railroad

What else? Check my banner...
 
Sorry for a double post... this is my 3rd or 4th post tonight. Auran forced me to re-log in for some reason, so this was all their doing, not mine at all.
 
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I'm having a hard time deciding between these two:
Denver and Rio Grande Western (Narrow Gauge)
Rio Grande Southern (Also Narrow Gauge)
 
New Haven
Boston & Maine
Maine Central
New York Central

The B&M was within walking distance from my house and was my introduction to railroads. I used to ride their BuddLiners to Boston when I was very young.

The New Haven had cool looking trains. They had all kinds of electric locomotives, cool diesels, BeeLiners (Budd cars), and other odd ducks.

The Maine Central used to do run throughs with the B&M and I'd see their equipment pooled in the B&M. Cool because they were like a 'sister' railroad for the longest time.

The NYC was in Boston, and ran cool looking trains like the Lake Shore Ltd., and neat freights.

It's sad to see all these great names disappear. The NYC, like the NH was absorbed and destroyed by the PennCentral. Sorry Conrail fans, but Conrail was still the PC only with different cloths, and used their power to wipe out their competition like the Lehigh Valley and the Erie.

The B&M and MEC are gone now, having been been destroyed by Guilford Transportation (Pan Am Railways). When Guilford took over, they ripped up track, drove customers away, and went on a program of lack of maintenance for the ROW as wells as the locomotives. They're a little better now, but not in anyway compared to CSX or NS.

John
 
Cincysouthernrwy, I think we have the same list (almost)! My favorites, in no particular order...

Western Maryland
Cumberland Valley
Norfolk & Western
Chessie
Reading
Norfolk Southern
C&O
B&O
East Broad Top
CNJ
Lehigh Valley
CSX
Virginian
Clinchfield
Seaboard System
Family Lines
Southern
Erie
P&LE
L&NE

Moral of the story: if it hauled coal, I like it. (For the most part)
 
Wopsononock RR (Altoona Northern)
Mt Tamalapais RR (Muir Woods)
Mt Washington Cog Rwy
Pikes Peak RR
Johnstown Inclined Plane (Johnstown)
Monongahelia Incline (Pittsburgh)
Dusquene Incline (Pittsburgh)
Mount Penn Gravity RR (Reading)
Switchback RR (Mauch Chunk)
Allegheny Portage Inclined Plane(s)
Pennsylvania Canal System (waterway)
Mount Lowe RR (California)
East Broad Top RR
Wanamakers Kempton & Southern RR
Blue Mountain & Reading
Strasburg RR
New Hope & Ivyland RR
Wilmington Western RR
 
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The Virginian Railway
The New York Central
Indiana Railroad
Norfolk & Western
Chesapeake & Ohio
Northern Pacific
Western Pacific
D&RGW
 
Erie Lackawanna
Baltimore and Ohio
Pennsylvania


and those are ones that had 5 tracks next to each other going thru my home town.

To that I add:

AC&Y
A&BB
N&W

Thats should be enough to figure out where that is.
 
Reading
PRR
B&O

I like all three because of the location of the routes. The Reading and PRR are at the top because they were at the forefront, especially with electrification technology. The PRR was especially innovative with electrified freight - too bad Amtrak ganked that up.
 
Reading
PRR
B&O

I like all three because of the location of the routes. The Reading and PRR are at the top because they were at the forefront, especially with electrification technology. The PRR was especially innovative with electrified freight - too bad Amtrak ganked that up.


It really wasn't Amtrak that stopped the electric freight. Blame that on our friends over in Conrail, and really when you think about it, they had inherited a pretty warn out system by then. The locomotives were going on 45+ years old at the time, and there were no replacements on order.

The New Haven was also an early electric pioneer, and worked very closely with General Electric. Their system used 11,500V at 12hz or something like that instead of 25KV AC we see today. The NH had hopes to expand up to Boston and beyond Danbury, but that never happened in their time. Boston was only wired about 10 years ago, and there is talk to rewire out to Danbury again.

John
 
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