When the locomotives met, their boilers exploded almost simultaneously, hurling metal fragments and debris high into the air.

In 1948, a devastating boiler explosion in Chillicothe, Ohio turned a steam locomotive into a twisted mass of metal and marked a symbolic end to steam’s dominance in American rail. Though not the ...

They made it possible to move people and goods further and faster than ever before, and helped catapult humanity into the industrial revolution. But by the 1940s, they were showing their age, and a ...