Symbols Of Fond Recall

Vestiges Of Our Romantic, Rich Railroad Past Live On!

A side of railroading that I really miss, as one can guess, one so pronounced in the railroading realm of a bygone era, is railroad-company iconography. This isn’t to say that such doesn’t exist today. It does. It just ain’t what it used to be, what it once was.

For starters, take the Norfolk Southern Thoroughbred, the Pan Am Railways Globe or the Union Pacific red, white and blue Shield. They’re survivors. Canadian Pacific’s Beaver, on the other hand, will more than likely disappear if it hasn’t already on account of the name adopted by the recently merged Canadian Pacific Kansas City entity. Is such to be forever relegated to the file cabinet of history?

I can’t help but think about all of the railroad corporate symbols that now escape common, regular detection. Great Northern’s Rocky Mountain Goat, Boston & Maine’s Minute Man, B&O’s Capitol Dome, the Santa Fe Cross, Wisconsin Central’s by comparison, relatively short-lived Shield (not to mention its inverted pine tree), Western Pacific’s falling Feather, Delaware & Hudson’s Shield with stylized D&H lettering, Pennsylvania’s Keystone (pictured below). I could go on and on.

Amazingly, happily, luckily some of this iconography is still around, like New York, New Haven & Hartford’s McGinnis-era red, white and black paint scheme with the large upper-case NH letters (pictured below), and others.

For a time the Chicago, Central & Pacific kept the Illinois Central Diamond logo going. And, even Santa Fe’s Cross persevered for sometime on the combined Burlington Northern & Santa Fe Heritage 1 locomotive repaints, albeit in modified form. But, still. And, before the CPKC merger, Kansas City Southern kept on company property a passenger train from the streamliner era dressed in a brown, red and yellow livery with a most easily recognizable KCS herald affixed to the locomotive fronts (pictured at top). What’s remarkable in this day and age is there are such vestiges that still exist!

And a shoutout to the museums, preservationist societies and people that and who, respectively, have kept many an olden-day iconic symbol alive. Good for them!

Long live these fine past railroad relics!

Updated: Mar. 23, 2024 at 11:48 a.m. PDT.

Image data: Kansas City Southern Railway (top); Pennsylvania Railroad (2nd); Hikki Nagasaki (3rd); Great Northern Railway (bottom). All via Wikimedia Commons

All material copyrighted 2024, Alan Kandel. All Rights Reserved.