A collection of motive power at Sayre, including GP38s and repainted C420s
A collection of motive power at Sayre, including GP38s and repainted C420s
Four U23Bs pass a C628 on their way out of Lehighton. The U23B was the last offering in GE's Universal Series and proved to be the most popular offering in the line as well.
U23Bs trudge past Easton Tower, just a month and a half before the Lehigh Valley ceased to exist.
Three quarters of the Lehigh Valley's fleet of GP38ACs cross the Delaware River en route to Phillipsburg, NJ
Two C420s and two RS-11s cross the Pohopoco Creek at Parryville, PA en route to Mechanicsville, NY with symbol freight AM-1. The date is March 6th, 1976 and the Lehigh Valley has less than a month left to live
The hottest trains on LV rails were the Buffalo-Oak Island Apollo piggyback and Mercury manifest freights. They were direct freights, with no stops at any yards. This was the eastbound Apollo-2 at Laurys Station, running quite a bit late. They rarely ran on time near the end of the LV's life due to the sheer amount of speed restrictions caused by the degraded roadbed.
Technically the Conrail era, but looking like business as usual on the Lehigh Valley, U23Bs pass the headquarters at Sayre
LV RS-3 leads a train of 25 mill gondolas, which means it's probably an Allentown Yard–Florence Yard transfer ultimately bound for Bethlehem Steel. This is 4 days into Conrail's existence.
NickD said:A scrappy lash-up that include des the last two F7As on the property, an RS-11, and two end-cab switchers.
Looks like there's an RS-2 or 3 hiding in there as well, between the F7 and the switchers.
In advance of the Lehigh Valley's end, a doubleheaded steam-powered excursion was run from Bethlehem, PA to South Plainfield, NJ, billed as a "Farewell to the Lehigh Valley" trip on October 25th of 1975. Motive power was provided by George Hart's Canadian Pacific D-10 Ten-Wheeler #972 and Sam Freeman's Florida East Coast Pacific #148. The #148 was described as a beautiful running gear with the nastiest, most worn-out boiler you've ever seen, while the #972 was just an all-around used-up little machine. Those aboard recall it being a typical '70s steam excursion: rundown steam locomotives, a rolling junkyard of secondhand coaches, it ran way behind schedule, and the train went into emergency brakes at least once when they struck a shopping cart on the tracks and it disconnected an air line under one of the coaches. Today, the #972 sits in a million rusty pieces at Strasburg, while the #148, after years of extreme neglect, was completely overhauled by former owners U.S. Sugar.
Ex-Lehigh Valley "hammerhead" RS-3 #211 idles at the Bethlehem facility in the early months of Conrail. The #211 had originally been purchased by PRR from Alco, and the unusual hood configuration was due to PRR ordering it with both a steam generator and dynamic brakes. Western Maryland had the only other four hammerhead RS-3s constructed, while C&NW had 3 RSD-5s with a hammerhead configuration. This unit was purchased by the Pennsylvania Railroad for helper service on Keating Summit out of Emporium, Pennsylvania, as well as to protect in the event of a locomotive failure on passenger service in the area. In 1970, PRR successor Penn Central chose the unit to be traded in to GE on a new locomotive order, but PC-controlled LV had several worn-out RS-2ss that had equal trade-in value, so they were sent to GE and were replaced with PC RS-3s, including the hammerhead. The #211 would eventually be run through Conrail's "Dewitt Geep" program, where they yanked the 567 V12s out of unneeded EMD E-units and transplanted them into old Alco RS-3s, and the #211 still survives today on the Rochester & Genesee Valley Railroad Museum, back in LV colors again.
Almost 8 months after Conrail took over, the Lehigh Valley "pups" are still in LV colors and numbers, and haven't even been split up. A set of five is shown at Bethlehem, ready to make a run over to the Mahanoy & Hazelton Division.
Renumbered into the Conrail number series, but not repainted or even patch-painted, RS-11 #7640 coughs smoke as it undergoes maintenance at Sayre.
SW7 #224 at Allentown Yard in March of 1977. It was funny how Conrail rushed to repaint the cabooses pronto, but a lot of motive power rattled along in their old livery for quite a whil.
End of the line for the C628s in 1981. Shortly after taking over, Conrail moved all of the big 6-axle Alco power that they inherited out to Mingoes Junction, where Penn Central had assigned all their big Alcos. As Conrail got its feet under it, it began rationalizing their roster, and all the 6-axle Alcos were some of the first to go. Sadly, not a single Conrail C628, either from the LV roster or the PRR/Penn Central roster survived. The scrapyard that Conrail sent a lot of their older power to actually offered up any units that museums or historical societies wanted (the Reading Company Technical & Historical Society grabbed an ex-Reading GP30, U30C and C630, and considered an SD45 but couldn't swing it financially) but somehow no one grabbed a C628. The fact that the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania also let the ex-PRR SD45s and U33Cs, the last diesels delivered to the PRR, slip away is also pretty unfortunate.
LV C420s and RS-11s pass by the New Jersey Zinc Company's plant at Palmerton, PA. You can see how the byproduct emissions of the factory has killed off most of the trees on the Lehigh Gap of Blue Mountain in the background. Today, the plant has been razed, and the wildlife has returned to hillsides.
The fourth day into Conrail finds the usual Lehigh Valley pups and Reading power at Bethlehem. Not long afterwards, all the old Reading and LV road power, which was in decent shape, was whisked away and replaced with used up Penn Central trash, according to an ex-Reading Conrail employee.
Nine days into Conrail, two of the ex-LV RS-11s purchased from PRR meet an ex-Penn Central SD40 and an ex-Erie-Lackawanna SD45-2 at Bethlehem. With D&H absconding with a lot of the newer, nicer road power, the Lehigh Valley C420s and GP38-2s and Reading GP39-2s, Conrail was forced to almost immediately start shuffling around power to plug gaps.
An ex-Erie-Lackawanna SD45, an ex-Penn Central GP30, and an ex-Reading C424 depart Bethlehem Steel with a train of empty coal cars, headed back to the mines.
Making it's first visit to PA since the CNJ pulled out back in 1972, ex-CNJ SD35 #2504 pays a visit to the Bethlehem shops in September of 1976. The CNJ's departure from Pennsylvania was actually performed without any say-so from the ICC. CNJ leased the Lehigh & Susquehanna Railroad as it's Pennsylvania arm, and so instead of having to file for the right to abandon from the ICC, the CNJ was able to just choose not to renew the lease. Of course, this sudden departure left a void in service, and so the ICC served the Lehigh Valley with a Directed Service Order to force them to pick up the gap.
The scene is all Erie-Lackawanna but this is the Conrail era. Erie-Lackawanna was a big fan of EMD's SD45s, owning three different version of the big 20-cylinder, 3600hp 6-axle units. They went in on 34 of the vanilla SD45s originally, then traded three U33Cs to the D&H for three more SD45s, then came back for 19 more of the SDP45s sans steam generators (the SDP45 rode on a longer frame, which gave them a larger fuel tank for longer range), and then ordered another 13 SD45-2s a few years later.
CNJ power returns to the Keystone State under Conrail's reins, with three RS-3s and what appears to be a GP9. The fact that the three front units all wear the CNJ's "Red Baron" livery is a real rarity, since CNJ never got around to completely painting their motive power in the Coast Guard-inspired paint scheme.
Two ex-L&HR C420s bracket two ex-PRR/ex-LV RS-11s as they leave the Steel City.
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