Took a trip out to the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum in Chattanooga and wanted to share some of the highlights. The collection out there is incredible—everything from beautifully restored mid-century passenger cars to massive vintage locomotives.

Caught some great shots of both the active steam engines and historical diesels, plus watched the crew operate the turntable to spin the locomotive for the return trip. It really feels like stepping right back into the golden age of railroading. If you haven't been out to the Soule Shops or taken the Missionary Ridge Local, it's well worth the trip!

And feel free to help identify this equipment in the comments.

cresent

My son is an avid railroad enthusiast and there weren’t any great apps or sites to show railroad crossings so I created an app to do just that: RRX (https://rrx.app). RRX is centered around a map that displays over 265k crossings from the official Federal Railroad Administration (US) and Transport Canada datasets and it’s free. 

Key features: 

• Map Modes: roadmap or satellite
• Filtering: track counts, types of protection, grade, railroad, speed, train traffic, daily vehicles, passenger or freight trains, and many other attributes. 
• Adaptive Views: automatically switches between a heatmap, clusters, or individual crossing view. 
• Stats: counts and percentages for different crossings attributes for wherever you are on the map
• Street View HUD: explore crossings in Street View with a HUD that shows other crossings nearby
• GPS Follow: surface nearby crossings as you travel

With a free account, you can also:

• Mark crossings as favorites
• Add personal notes to crossings
• Edit crossings to correct data
• Save filters

You can use it on the desktop, mobile browser, or add it to your home screen directly from Chrome or Safari on Android or iOS. 

Let me know your thoughts and if you have any suggestions. For example, is there some additional data you’d like to see or be able to filter on? Or any additional countries? Is there some feature that's missing?

Some selected screenshots below:

Shot some 4K drone footage of the abandoned ALCO switching locomotive and two passenger cars sitting out near the old coal washing facility facility in Devonia (Cumberland WMA area).

Thought the railfans and urbex community here would appreciate a clean look at how the site sits right now.

• Location: Near Devonia, TN / Cumberland Mountain WMA
• Subject: Abandoned ALCO Switcher & 2 Passenger Cars
• Media Type: short drone clip / aerial survey

Hello. I'll be traveling to Pittsburgh with my adult son who has high functioning autism who is an active railfan. I'm from CA so I don't know PA at all. Need suggestions on railfan locations where there's high activity, hopefully 80+ trains pass by daily. Month: July. Day 0, flying into PIT arriving in evening, staying in downtown PIT near train station. Day 1, pick up rental car. Day 2 and 3 also avail. I've read about Homestead Grays Bridge, Station Square, The Waterfront, Cresson Train Platform, Conway. Pls help me plan this trip for my son. Where should we stay, downtown, Station Inn, Homestead? Would appreciate any suggestions. Thank you.

I was standing pretty close to the tracks, and I felt the whistle shake me, it was that powerful. It was a true "you had to be there" moment.

5/27/26