Ever since the opening of the farthest frontiers of the North American continent, locomotives have held a special place in folklore and history. Every now and then a vintage steam locomotive appears on a coin, ...

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Ever since the opening of the farthest frontiers of the North American continent, locomotives have held a special place in folklore and history. Every now and then a vintage steam locomotive appears on a coin, and when it does watch out because you're likely to get trampled by the stampede of collectors trying to obtain them. What's more, only a handful of locomotive coins have ever been issued and they're especially tough to find. Now you can get one of the most popular locomotive coins ever issued — the 1981 Canada Trans-Canada Railway Silver Dollar. The coin was issued to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the passage of an Act of Canada's Parliament that permitted the building of the Trans-Canada Railway. With the Act's passage, the Canadian Pacific Railway was founded in 1881 to build a rail line linking Canada's eastern population centers with the vast, unpopulated West. This huge engineering feat was completed four years later in 1885 when the last rail spike was driven home at British Columbia.