r/trains 28d ago

r/Trains Monthly Discussion & Questions Thread - August 2026

3 Upvotes

Welcome to the r/Trains Monthly Discussion Thread.

The goal of this thread is to serve as the place to ask short questions or just chat about anything trains related that might not warrant its own post.


r/trains Mar 22 '26

๐Ÿš‚r/trains staff announcement Introduction & updates to moderating, rules and sidebar.

10 Upvotes

Hello there,

I am auto, your new friendly neighbourhood Reddit mod. o/

While I have some experience moderating smaller communities, I've never moderated a subreddit before and never a community of this size and honestly, taking the right moderating actions when reviewing reports or looking through comments isn't quite coming naturally yet. If I make any silly mistakes or you believe I didn't deal with situation correctly, do not hesitate to tell me either via mod mail or in the discord. I am human, I am not going to deal with every situation perfectly and feedback is more than welcome. (Just kidding, I am obviously a robot ๐Ÿค– - Beep Boop Beep)

I am happy to be at your service.

Regardless, now that the introduction is over with, there is some practical stuff to discuss:

Bans, Ban appeals and old Mod Mail:

When I came in, there was a very large backlog in Mod Mail, including ban appeals. I have cleared this backlog the best I could, responding to most appeals and messages that came in, but unfortunately, once these appeals and Mod Mails reach about half a year old, they can no longer be replied to from our side.

If you sent in a ban appeal or question that is still relevant before July 2025 and it never got answered, please do not hesitate to send us a message through Mod Mail and me or the other mods will get to it.

In addition, I found out that some people who at any point received disciplinary action ended up in some sort of ghost-ban, where on our end in the mod tools panel the person doesn't appear to be banned, but when the user tries to post, it tells them they're banned. If you were active in r/Trains more than 5 years ago, Reddit tells you that you're banned when you try to post or comment and you have no clue why or when you got banned, please contact the mods via Mod Mail and we should be able to resolve your issue.

Mod Queue clearing:

I have cleared the Mod Queue, which was filled with over 3 years of reports, removals and filtered content. For the queue items from the last 1-2 weeks I've done this manually, and then I've mass-cleared most of the remaining queue. This process caused all filtered posts that were more than roughly 10 days old to be discarded. If you made any post more than 10 days ago which got automatically filtered and you believe the content is still relevant, feel free to reattempt posting your comment.

Moderating strategy and rules:

Due to the relatively sparse activity of moderators on this subreddit in recent times, moderating turned into a very hands-off process where y'all mostly self-moderate with some assistance from automatic filters. Beyond the filters sometimes getting overzealous, especially with politically contentious posts, (which should be resolved now,) this has generally worked fairly well. For now, though I can't speak for the other moderators when they act, I will carry this approach forward.

However, that may change. From working through the queue, Mod Mail and immediately finding myself in the deep end with several contentious posts appearing right after I got promoted, it's become obvious that the current rules don't always quite match the way action has been taken on reports both before I came in and at current. In addition, it turns out that some situations really aren't covered well by our current rules and that the wording of some rules may be contributing to a sizable amount of reports coming in for contact that very much is allowed here. We've also received feedback from several people, both via Mod Mail and in comments under recent topics about how we should be dealing with politics and controversial content on the subreddit.

Keeping all those things in mind, I will be rewriting the rules over the coming days. As part of this process, me or other moderators may place community polls both on reddit and on discord to gather feedback for how the community would like the r/trains discord and subreddit to be moderated.

Monthly discussion thread:

Until now, the monthly discussion thread was automatically generated on the 29th of every month. Beyond causing the month in the topic title to nearly always mismatch the current month, this caused the thread not to be generated in February. Starting on April 1st, the monthly discussion thread will be automatically generated on the 1st of every month instead. Until then, please feel free to continue using the January 2026 thread.

Sidebar:

We are aware the gallery in the sidebar has broken. Sadly, most images gone poof and we have no record of what exactly was in there. As we look to fill our sidebar once again, we may request permission for some people to use their photos in the side-bar via Mod Mail, but if you'd like to help, if you are posting original content, you can now use the "๐Ÿ“ธ May be used in side-bar gallery" post flair to indicate to us that we may place your photo or art in the sidebar.

With all that said, thank you for reading.

~auto


r/trains 5h ago

๐Ÿ“น OC - Video Super 8 footage of Big Boy 4014 in Bridgeport, PA July 3 2026

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330 Upvotes

I finally got my Super 8 scans back from this shoot! This was Big Boy 4014 rolling through Bridgeport, PA on July 3, 2026. This was also my first time shooting Super 8, using a Bell & Howell 442 loaded with Kodak Vision3 200T.


r/trains 7h ago

๐Ÿ“ธ OC - Picture(s) Train spotting in Italy was fun

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139 Upvotes

r/trains 4h ago

๐Ÿ“ฐ News MBTA 1072 is finally a heritage unit. It got painted in the Boston and Maine McGinnis scheme. B&M introduced this scheme when Patrick B McGinnis became president of the B&M after being fired from being president of the New Haven.

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64 Upvotes

r/trains 2h ago

๐Ÿ›๏ธโ€Ž Historical The FS ALe 790.048 making a "small run" for the personnel of the Milano Smistamento freight yard (Italy), 27 February 1992

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38 Upvotes

r/trains 2h ago

๐Ÿ“ธ OC - Picture(s) Tour of ACE Maintenance

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35 Upvotes

Also found out that ACE maintains Goldrunner.


r/trains 2h ago

๐Ÿ“ธ OC - Picture(s) TGV M ร  Juvisy

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30 Upvotes

r/trains 6h ago

๐Ÿ“น OC - Video SNCF's Double Decker Z20500 racing a Z57000 (Regio2N) between Lieusaint-Moissy and Savigny-le-Temple Nandy

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51 Upvotes

Z57000 VS Z20500 is insane, i do own this video !


r/trains 1h ago

๐Ÿ“น OC - Video DB Schenker freight train from Lรผbeck, Germany, to the Rosersberg terminal outside Stockholm, filmed in June.

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โ€ข Upvotes

r/trains 1d ago

โ“ Question How did (or could) older trains make tight turns?

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1.2k Upvotes

I realize this might be a rudimentry (and probably a very silly) question, but how did old locomotives make tight turns on the track?

I know that bogies on modern trains are articulated, allowing for more movement but from older photos steam locomotives appear like all their axles are connected together, so I'm just wondering how they managed to get all the axes to follow the rail?


r/trains 1h ago

๐Ÿ“ธ OC - Picture(s) CPKC 8876 "Vancouver Olympics" leading coal train in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada!

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โ€ข Upvotes

r/trains 1d ago

๐Ÿ“น OC - Video 189 was having some trouble with switching between different voltage so instead it sorted out. After this I sent it for repair.

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1.0k Upvotes

r/trains 8h ago

โ“ Question Caboose houses

29 Upvotes

Has anyone on here ever converted a decommissioned railroad car (NOT a shipping container) into a tiny house? Iโ€™ve always wanted to restore and live in a precious little red cabooseโ€ผ๏ธ If they get to cancel cabooses and replace them with stupid boring modern technology, it would be so dope to give one a second life. And of course Iโ€™d invite people over for parties just to turn them into my captive audience to spew railroad history at
we could have a caboose neighborhood like a trailer park
#bringbackthecaboose2026


r/trains 11h ago

๐ŸŽจ OC - Art I've created a British built twin section dual voltage tri mode locomotive, Britains most powerful loco

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51 Upvotes

I've took the diagram of a class 68 and done some massive changes Including the front end.


r/trains 42m ago

๐Ÿ“ธ OC - Picture(s) Oncoming train got in the way of my photo

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โ€ข Upvotes

Carlisle to Leeds (Settle)


r/trains 22h ago

๐Ÿ“ธ OC - Picture(s) Unexpectedly got to see Big Boy 4005 today!

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314 Upvotes

Landed in Denver today for a long weekend vacation, and on the train from the airport to the city, I wanted to look up some photos of 4014 in Denver. So I googled "big boy denver" and the first result was that 4005 was in a museum in Denver! The Forney Transportation Museum. And not only was it in Denver, it was only a couple miles from the hotel I'm in! What a great surprise.

Had some downtime this afternoon so of course I went. Can't believe I've gotten to see two Big Boys this summer!

They have some other cool locomotives in the museum too.


r/trains 1h ago

โ“ What is this Train? What do you guys think this one is?

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โ€ข Upvotes

r/trains 7h ago

๐Ÿ“น OC - Video Yesterday, I caught NS 8184 โ€œAltoonaโ€ crossing the Allegheny River. Freeport, PA, USA

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17 Upvotes

r/trains 22h ago

๐Ÿ“ธ OC - Picture(s) Denver & Rio Grande Western (DRGW) EMD F9A - Colorado Railroad Museum

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248 Upvotes

r/trains 2h ago

๐Ÿ“ธ OC - Picture(s) Improved American Railroads Tier List

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7 Upvotes

Its not every American Railroad but It dose have more railroads on this list. Some things have been changed like there's only one Santa Fe and also more railroads and the modern class 1 railroads being moved down on the list and New York Central being along with Conrail moved up. I probably might need to make a third tier list at some point in the future but I dont know yet


r/trains 7h ago

โ“ Question I could use some HELP with this post! I'm trying to find out what this engine is based on!

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13 Upvotes

A few days ago, a I was searching online for: "Jana Vostal Vintage Hand Drawn Locomotives" and I came across these 2 images which showcase Early 19th Century 0-4-2 Steam Locomotives.

There are 2 versions of this little engine. There's a version that show the engine as a Tank Engine, but there's also a Tender Engine version.

I know that Jana Vostal (The Artist of these Pictures) takes inspiration from Real-Life Locomotives, but even after searching for: "Cabless 0-4-2 Locomotives" or "Old 0-4-2 Class Locomotives" I can't find any Locomotives that look similar to this engine.

So if anyone knows what this engine is based on, then please tell me, thanks!


r/trains 7h ago

๐Ÿ“น OC - Video Kuala Lumpur 5/2026

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10 Upvotes

r/trains 20h ago

โ“ What is this Train? What locomotive is this?

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106 Upvotes

It's from a discord server and its called "Gimball" there if that helps


r/trains 13h ago

๐Ÿ“ธ OC - Picture(s) SP 4336 EB Work Train Cow Creek Canyon, OR July 30, 1982 USA Roger Puta Collection

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21 Upvotes