Grassroots Railroad Sports?

Another ex-L&HR C420/ex-LV RS-11 pairing rolling back in with the ex-LV wreck train. 

After the Lehigh Valley took over the CNJ lines in Pennsylvania in 1972, the LV main between Bethlehem and Lehighton was redundant trackage. The LV chose to keep the tracks operational, primarily to allow the two hottest trains on the system, the Apollo and the Mercury piggybacks, to bypass the congestion of Allentown yard. Here a seven-car oversized load approaches Lehighton Interlocking on the former LV, which was finally torn up between Catasauqua and Lehighton in 1983. The lead unit is an ex-Reading SD45, and from this angle you can see a unique feature of the Reading's five SD45s. Reading ordered all of their SD45s with dual control stands, which required an extended cab to accomodate them. As a result, the windshield and number boards protrude about 6" out from the location on other low-nose SD45's.

During the early years, due to owning a lot of oddball junk in states of disrepair, Conrail also found itself leasing a lot of power, resulting in the odd situation of a C&NW GP30 in Pennsylvania, leading a bunch of ex-Penn Central power. Also, there is either some horrifically bad track or the rear truck of that ex-PC GE U33B is off the rails and on the dirt.

Conrail blue was slow to filter onto the scene on motive power, but a shiny blue SD40 is shown leading an ex-CNJ GP9 and an ex-EL SD45 at Allentown in June of '77. Notice how much smaller the GP9 is compared to the big SD40 and SD45.

A crew swings aboard an ex-Erie-Lackawanna GP35 at Bethlehem engine facilities. What's really strange is that the old EL logo has been painted over on the end of the unit, but then EL lettering was applied using the stencils for Penn Central lettering. There's a story there, although it's likely lost to time.

Alco products gather on the leads at the Altoona back shops. The two ex-Reading C424s, one still in Reading green and yellow and the other in Conrail blue, are headed back out on the road, but the ex-PRR RS-27, #2414, appears to have run her last miles. The hood doors are open, a number board is missing, and she is sitting on shop trucks. The trucks and traction motors were likely robbed for spares. The RS-27s were never a popular unit on Conrail, or really anywhere, and so they were among the first to go.

More ex-Reading power at Altoona. Does something look strange with that end cab switcher? That's because it's a hybrid. It started life as a Baldwin VO-1000, but in 1959 Reading sent the Baldwin switchers to La Grange and had EMD rebuild them with 567 engines and an EMD-style hood, calling the end result an SW1200m. The shape of the cab and curved handrails, plus the odd proportions of the hood are the giveaways that all is not as it first appears. Later on, Conrail would scavenge the EMD V12s out of a pair of SW12000ms to repower the ex-Erie E8 that they put in their executive fleet, since the engines had fairly light use on them.

Matched units in Altoona. Two ex-Penn Central C424s are switching cars in the yard, with the #2434 clearly ailing going off of the amount of oil sprayed over the hood. Meanwhile, ex-PC and ex-EL SD45s are rolling a TOFC train by, with a single auto-rack oddly tacked on at the front. Looks like Ford Fiestas, going off the 1978 date. At the far upper right is the deadlines, where all sorts of treasures await scrapping.

A pair of renumbered C420s formerly belonging to the Lehigh & Hudson River crawl through Treichlers, PA under a cloud of blue-gray smoke. The ex-L&HR units were the only C420s to find their way onto Conrail roster (D&H scooped up all the Lehigh Valley C420s beforehand). L&HR had nine of them, but one was sold to Essex Terminal and two to British Columbia Rail in 1972 as the L&HR's fortunes continued to decline and they needed less and less motive power The remaining six ran until around 1980, when they were retired. Some went to Arkansas & Missouri afterwards, while the D&H and Green Bay & Western also grabbed up a couple. The D&H unit was particularly amusing, as they purchased it to use as a parts donor, then found it to be in better shape than some of the C420s that they had, and so they overhauled it and put it in service.

According to those who were around, Conrail's direct orders were that the six C420s that they inherited from the L&HR were to be renumbered and have Conrail patch lettering applied and then run until they suffered mechanical failure, at which point they would be retired. They were not to be given any major repairs, and they were not to be repainted into Conrail blue. Clearly the crews at Bethlehem missed the memo and painted up #2072 into Conrail blue. The #2072 didn’t go through the typical repainting process at a large facility, such as Juniata. Instead, the crews at Bethlehem cleaned up the engine as best they could and then applied the blue using roller brushes. Therefore, CR #2072 lacks large Conrail heralds because the crews didn't have access to the large herald stencils, instead just applying the small CR lettering on the long hood. An unsubstantiated story says that the unknown responsible employee was called on the carpet for this infraction. The #2072's life in Conrail blue was ultimately rather short-lived. It was repainted some time between November 1977 and April 1978, and in March of 1979, it was photographed on the Collinwood deadlines. It was seen once again in September 1979, when it had been pulled from the deadlines and was being worked on, probably for its trip off the line to Naporano Iron & Metal Co.

Conrail #2072 and an old Lehigh Valley Alco pass by the still-operating Bethlehem Steel complex, while a track crew works on getting the ex-LV line from New York to Harrisburg back in shape after years of deferred maintenance.

A typical rainbow-era Conrail lash-up gets a roll on a freight headed out of Altoona. In the lead is a Conrail blue GP38-2, followed by a Penn Central black GP38, then two Reading green and yellow C424s, then another Penn Central black GP38, and then a Penn Central black U23B.

In 1970, the Reading took delivery of twenty brand-new wide vision cabooses. On Conrail's formation, the twenty cabooses were split, with ten staying with Conrail, and the other ten going to the D&H. One of the ones that stayed is riding in unfamiliar territory as it traverses Horseshoe Curve.

One of the hubs for the big 6-axle Alcos, the C628s, C630s and C636s from Lehigh Valley, Reading and Penn Central, was at Conway Yard. There's some other power intermingled in those two photos, including a GE U33B, a GP9, a pair of C424s, and even an RS-27.

A GP38 and two C430s arrive in Mingos Junction with an iron ore train. Mingo Junction was the stronghold for big Alco 6-axle power, and railfans flocked to catch the C628s, C630s, and C636s in drag freight service.

A shiny blue SD45 keeps a crusty black C636 company in the decrepit Mingo Junction roundhouse. By August of 1978, the Alcos were feeling the pressure even here in their stronghold. The SD45s rated better assignments, but they didn't last much longer than the Alcos.

A GP38 eases onto the turntable at Mingo Junction while an SD45, two C630s, and a C636 watch.

An ex-PRR RS-27 waits on the ready track with a pair of end-cab switchers. It's amazing to see an RS-27, which were a pretty reviled machine, still in service on a Class I in 1978.

An ex-NYC C430 in Conrail blue drills cars at Weirton, WV. The coil springs on the side of the trucks are identifying features of an Alco Hi-Adhesion truck, which means it's one of the ten ex-NYC units and not one of the two ex-RDG units, since Reading ordered theirs with standard AAR trucks. Conrail ended up with 12 out of 16 C430s built on their roster, and the #2051 would eventually be sold to New York, Susquehanna & Western and then scrapped. Conrail almost ended up with more C430s, since New York Central actually had more on order, only for Alco to go out of business before they were constructed.

An odd mix of power at the Buffalo yard. In the lead is an unrepainted ex-EL GP7, followed by a "Dewitt Geep" (an RS-3 with a 1200hp EMD 567 V12 swap performed at Dewitt, NY), then an end-cab switcher, and then a big U33.

Another colorful mix at Buffalo. Along with the usual Conrail blue and Penn Central black, there's an Erie-Lackawanna C424, a Reading GP35, and a leased Bangor & Aroostook GP38. The #6519 is a GE U25C, which was a fairly rare machine, with only 119 built and 20 going to PRR. The origin of the U25C grew out of the need for six axle locomotives to operate on a 12-mile heavy haul railroad to construct Oroville Dam. The General Electric salesman to Oro Dam Constructors offered essentially a U25B riding on six axle trucks. When the salesman got back to GE's Erie Plant it was discovered that no six axle U25 was available, nor did GE wish to construct a domestic six axle road switcher until the horsepower threshold reached 3000 horsepower. Rather than lose the four unit sale GE quickly began a design of a six axle U25 that relied heavily on the U25B for engineering.

Perhaps the most obscure of Conrail's operations was the Niagara Junction Railway. The little electrified railroad, which operated 44 miles of trackage mostly congregated in Niagara Falls, was founded in 1898 as a subsidiary of the Niagara Falls Hydraulic Power and Manufacturing Company, then was sold in 1948 to be jointly owned by it's connecting railroads: New York Central, Lehigh Valley, and Erie. When Conrail was formed in 1976, it took control of the Niagara Junction Railway, operating the little GE-built "E10B" center cab electrics. Conrail had no desire to run electrified freight service though, and in 1979, they dieselized the ex-Niagara Junction operation. After a year of retirement, they were converted to third-rail shoes and shipped down to Harmon, NY to replace the ancient ex-NYC S-Motors, the oldest power on the Conrail roster. This photo of Conrail #4753 shows it still running up on it's original territory. 

A rare catch, one of only two SD7s on Conrail's roster. They came from PRR and were used on the grueling 7000 foot long, 5.89% graded Madison Hill in Indiana. The two SD7s came specially equipped with added ballast, extra-low gearing, dynamic brakes, and rail washers. There is a story about how after the Penn Central merger, they were sent to shops for overhaul, and the shop just happened to be an ex-NYC facility. The ex-NYC crew wasn't aware of their special assignment and tried to homogenize them to match the rest of the fleet operating in Indiana, and so they disconnected the dynamic brakes. The SD7 returned to Madison Hill and nearly had a runaway the next time it was operated when they engaged the dynamic brakes and nothing happened. By this point, Conrail had sold off the Madison Hill operation, and the SD7s were reassigned elsewhere.

A past that no longer would be and a future that never would be. Amtrak E-units at the end of their life sit at Harrisburg sit near the EMD E10B demonstrator. In the 1970s, as the fuel crisis worsened and railroads began considering electrification, EMD decided to jump into the electric locomotive market and constructed two prototype machines: the 6000hp C-C drag freight GM6C in 1975 and the 10000hp B-B-B high speed freight GM10B in 1976. Unfortunately, at the time, Milwaukee Road had de-electrified their Pacific Coast Extension and Great Northern had removed their electrification in 1957, so the only place to test was on Penn Central, and then Conrail.

You could hardly select a more indifferent operating environment. Penn Central had no money to spend maintaining or troubleshooting someone else’s locomotives, and discouraged management had its hands full just operating the basic service with its own tired equipment. Conrail was busy trying to sort out their fleet of worn-out motive power and smooth out a tangle of overlapping, unmaintained trackage. And EMD's complete lack of background in electric locomotive development didn't inspire much confidence. The early reliability on the #1975 and #1976 was fairly poor, and one Penn Central foreman savagely told an EMD technical engineer that "the best tool for measuring their availability was a stopwatch." The two units got stuck in a catch-22 where, Conrail wouldn't dispatch them because they were unreliable, but EMD couldn't improve the reliability because the units weren't getting any run time for R&D purposes.

The other issue was that in the wake of the 1973 Regional Rail Reorganization Act, Amtrak had begun acquiring portions of the Northeast Corridor that were not already owned by regional transportation authorities. By the time Conrail was formed in 1976, the passenger carrier owned the entire corridor except for portions owned by Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority and Connecticut Department of Transportation. Amtrak also owned the electrical distribution network on the former Pennsylvania Railroad lines, a major part of electric freight operations in the eastern US. Amtrak's purpose was to haul passengers, not freight, and the Conrail freight traffic on the electrified lines was increasingly unwelcome. Amtrak initiated surcharges on electricity and car movement, and Conrail responded by moving as much of its traffic as possible onto its other lines that paralleled the electrified routes. Conrail was retiring the electric locomotives passed along from Penn Central, except for the ex-Pennsy GE E44 units, and there were no signs that the need for new electric freight units was going to surface again.

Another factor was that Conrail had decided on Lehigh Valley’s Oak Island Yard in North Jersey as its principal yard in the NY area, which was was easily reached from ex-LV lines but not from PRR lines. Conrail also decided to use the RDG and LV between Harrisburg and Oak Island via Allentown. Interchange from PRR to RDG in Harrisburg was easy and RDG to LV at Allentown was even easier since LV had inherited Allentown Yard when CNJ withdrew from Pennsylvania. Simply put, the PRR electrified lines didn't go where Conrail needed them to, and they sure weren't going to spend the money electrifying the old LV, Reading, and CNJ lines.

EMD continued to run the two through the late '70s and into the '80s, whenever Conrail would let them out on the rails. The GM6C was pretty versatile and was operated on many parts of the Conrail electrified system. The GM10B was more of a specialty locomotive for high-speed, high-value freight, and tended to be operated between Harrisburg, PA, and Kearny, NJ, on intermodal trains operated at night to keep out of Amtrak’s way during daylight. By then, oil prices had recovered and railroads were mothballing their stillborn plans for added electrification, and Conrail was fully out of the electric freight hauling operation by 1982. This left the GM10B and GM6C without any future customers and EMD took the two prototypes back to La Grange, where they sat and were cannibalized slowly, before eventually being sent through the gates of Pielet Brothers scrapyard.