With yesterday being Thanksgiving, here's a photo of one of the Bangor & Aroostook's "Turkey Trains". The BAR ran these trains from Fort Kent, ME to Searsport, ME every year from 1978 to 1994, usually hauled behind one of their antiquated F3As that hung onto the roster until the very end. They delivered free turkeys to any BAR employees along the line.
And a happy Thanksgiving wish from Owen W., the mascot of the O&W created in the later years to try and revive business on the bankrupt line.
Pretty amusing video of a Norfolk Southern hogger on a helper crew absolutely losing it on the Allegheny dispatcher. The video explains it as well, but freight 12G with helper crew C05 were on a 2% downgrade near Horseshoe Curve, with 12G's crew getting near the end of their legal limit of on-shift time. Unable to make it to Rose Yard in time, Allegheny dispatcher gets the idea to have 12G's crew tie down the handbrakes, have C05 unhook from the rear of the train and shut down their power and tie it down, then hop aboard an eastbound train and ride it up to the front of 12G and replace the outlawed crew. Then his plan was for them to try and get 12G down into Rose Yard with only the 2 units on the front for dynamic braking. You can tell that 12G's crew is just kind of incredulous at how bad a plan it is (tying units down on a hill is asking for a runaway, leaving the helper set behind and clogging up the line is not a great move, and trying to get down the hill with only 2 units on the head end for braking is also asking for a runaway). But then helper C05's engineer lights into the dispatcher. And as it turns out, Allegheny dispatcher is remotely located in Atlanta. No clue about the terrain. Then everyone else in the area starts to pile on.
Unfortunately, it's increasingly looking like the New York Central electric locomotives that were stored/abandoned at Beacon Island, NY are going to end up scrapped. A historical group had saved NYC Class S-1 #100, built in 1904 and the first electric locomotive in the US, and Class T-3a #278, the sole surviving NYC T-Motor, along with a U25B, an RS-3 and 4 ex-D&RGW/D&H coaches, and ended up moving them to Beacon Island to store them until a new site could be secured. They were then basically abandoned there for 3 decades, and in 2013 they were sold to Danbury Railway Museum. Then, this year, redevelopment on Beacon Island was slated to begin and Danbury was told that the stuff had to go, or be scrapped. The coaches were slated to be scrapped, deemed too far gone to warrant any effort, and the U25B and RS-3 were originally going to be saved, but were also found to be too far gone. Danbury Railway Museum came up with a plan to disassemble the locomotives, truck them out to a Metro North facility, reassemble them and rerail them, and then move them by rail to Danbury.
The plan has since fallen apart. First they got locked out of the site for 8 months, following a lawsuit that tied up all redevelopment efforts. Then, the original plan was to move the electrics out over the power plant property on the existing rails was halted as one of the natural gas pipeline owners did not want the weight of the locomotives going over their line buried 30 feet in the ground unless an expensive temporary bridge was built. The trucking company and the preliminary study found that the pipeline will be fine, considering it's 30 feet below ground, but the pipeline owner is standing his ground.
By the end of last week the estimated project cost was increased significantly. The consulting firm has worked with Danbury in finding an area where the locomotives can be stored until such a time they can be loaded and hauled out on the new access road, set to be completed within two months. Additional costs include cranes and matting necessary to store and later load the locomotives. They originally asked the consulting firm if instead of temporarily moving the engines at a cost of $230,000 they could just push them north on the rails, out of the way of construction of the access road. They were no, because they plan on rehabilitating the existing railroad right of way into a haul road for stone delivery trucks. Danbury then countered and tried to meet in the middle, by asking if they could move the engines, and scrap the rails north and south of the locomotives where they are spotted, freeing up their future haul road, and then just building a passing lane alongside the engines, and again the response was no, with no reason given.
At this point, everyone is champing at the bit to start construction, the original fundraising money has since been spent, costs are spiraling out of control, and pretty much every alternate plan that the museum is proposing keeps getting shot down with the other side seemingly unwilling to compromise. I call total BS on the whole notion that the locomotives can't be rolled over the pipeline. At a depth of 30 feet, you could stack a pair of Alleghenies and roll them over that pipe without it ever knowing they were there. It's just a convenient excuse to not be cooperative, especially seeing as how they have no issue with the scrappers moving their equipment in and out over the pipeline to cut up the passenger cars, RS-3 and U25B.
I can't entirely fault Danbury Railway Museum. After all, it was the historical group that moved all this stuff here in 1984, with no real plan of what to do with it someday and then pretty much abandoned it. To preserve something, you have to put forth some sort of effort and really be in the game. But also, Danbury Railway Museum has actually owned them for a decade now, and waited until it was the clock was ticking to get them out of there or face scrapping to actually start trying to get stuff out of there.
The whole situation just really sucks. Losing both the last remaining T-Motor and the very first electric locomotive in the US is a huge blow, especially when there is so little preserved NYC electric equipment. There's two other S-motors in museums, and that's it. The R- and P-motors are all gone, and the T-motors appear about to go extinct. Compare to PRR, where there is 16 GG1s alone, and then there's a P5, a B1, and an E44
New York Central's electric operations were always a little odd compared to the competition. Whereas the PRR had the North East Corridor and the Keystone Corridor (and stillborn plans to electrify the mainline as far west as Harrisburg), New Haven had the electrified line from New York to Cedar Hill, Virginian had a huge portion of their mainline electrified and Milwaukee Road had the entire Pacific Coast Extension running under catenary, the New York Central really only had two isolated spots of electric operation. The first was the area surrounding New York City, and the other was the later Cleveland Union Terminal operation from Collinwood to Linndale. Even weirder was that the two used different electrical systems: New York City was 660V third-rail DC, while CUT was 3000V overhead catenary DC. The NYC did have plans during WWII to electrify the line from Croton-Harmon all the way out to Buffalo, with big 2-C-C-2 Alco-GE double-ended electrics, but the economy of diesels killed this before it ever came to be. By and large, NYC just used electric operation to get in an out of major cities. There was no long-distance passenger and freight haulage by juice jacks on the NYC.
Saw this the other day when searching the Lego store, as one does.
Also found this one too:
Probably be excellent gift ideas.
The Manhattan electrified portion was the result of a horrific 1902 accident in the Park Avenue Tunnel, caused by reduced visibility due to smoke filling the tunnels. The city passed legislature that would ban all steam locomotives in Manhattan by 1908, prompting the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad to jump-start an electrification program in conjunction with Alco and General Electric. Due to the cramped confines of the tunnel, there wasn't room for overhead catenary, so they settled on a third-rail system. This also included the mainline, as far north as Croton-Harmon.
Alco-GE's first locomotives, the first mass-produced electric locomotives in the world, were the center-cab, 1-D-1, 1695hp S-1s. They had a rigid wheelbase, with even the front and rear idler axles being rigid-mounted. The NYC&HRRR was immediately impressed with the advantages of the S-1s, since it was only half the length of a standard steam locomotive with tender and weighed only two thirds as much, but could provide more power, especially when starting trains on steep grades. It was capable of rapid acceleration and deceleration, ideal for the Hudson and Harlem lines’ numerous, closely spaced commuter stations, and the locomotive required no turntable and could be reversed for service in the opposite direction. Unfortunately the honeymoon quickly ended when just two days into electric service, a pair of S-1s derailed on the Harlem Line and caused an accident that killed 24 and injured 140. Alco-GE's solution was to replace the rigid-mounted single-axle idler trucks with pivoting 2-axle idler trucks, making it a 2-D-2 wheel arrangement, renaming them to S-2s. With weight now split between equal amounts of powered and unpowered axles, the converted S-2s and later S-3s were never completely satisfactory at pulling long heavy trains at high speed.
Alco-GE began designing a replacement locomotive for the S-motors, and in 1923, they delivered the first of the T-1s to the New York Central. These were a box-cab B-B-B-B locomotive rated at continuous 2500hp. With 8-powered axles, these were much more sure-footed, and they took over all main passenger trains on the Hudson and Harlem divisions. Over the next 13 years, Alco-GE delivered a total of 26 of the T-motors (there were T-1a, T-1b, T-2a, T-2b and T-3a subclasses based on delivery batch) to the New York Central. The T-motors demoted the S-motors to commuter runs, work trains, and shuttling trains between Grand Central Terminal and Mott Haven yard.
In 1926, the Kauffman Act was passed, which forced the elevation and electrification of all rail lines in all burroughs of New York City, including the NYC's West Side Freight Line. Lacking an electric locomotive designed for freight service, NYC returned to Alco-GE for a freight design. The prototype, classed R, consisted of two semi-permanently coupled units numbered #1200 and #1201, each with a B-B wheel configuration and four 500 hp traction motors. The R was successful, but a simpler single-unit C-C locomotive was chosen as the final design. Classed R2 and rated at 3000hp, 42 of them were delivered between 1930 and 1931, taking over freight on the West Side Freight Line and toiling in relative obscurity.
The R2s were some of the first to find themselves facing retirement, when advancing diesel technology resulted in NYC deciding to use diesels to haul freight on the West Side Freight Line. . In the 1940s, several were sent west to pull trains through the electrified Detroit River Tunnels, returning in 1953 when the tunnels were ventilated for diesel operations. In 1955, ten R-2 Motors were sold to the Chicago, South Shore & South Bend to supplement their electrified freight operations, being rebuilt to use the CSS&SB's 1500V DC overhead catenary. The NYC's remaining R2s were retired through the 1950s and 1960s, all being scrapped, while the CSS&SB held onto theirs into the '70s before scrapping them all.
The T-Motors were the next to be hit. After de-electrifying the Cleveland Union Terminal operations, the P-Motors were converted from catenary to third rail (in fact, the leftover parts from the conversion of the P-Motors was used to swap the CSS&SB R-2s to pantographs) and moved east to the Hudson and Harlem divisions. The fleet of T-Motors was reduced to just six units by the time of the Penn Central merger and were shifted to secondary duties. All of them, except the one at Beacon Island that faces scrapping, were scrapped.
The S-Motors held on into the Penn Central era as well, but were also soon retired. The Penn Central merger gave access to the New Haven's FL9s and they were almost immediately moved to New York City to handle all trains going in and out of New York City to eliminate engine changeovers. The reduction of long-distance passenger service into Grand Central Terminal also depleted their usefulness. One was donated to the National Museum of Transportation in St. Louis, another to Illinois Railway Museum, and the very first S-Motor, #6000/#100, is on Beacon Island facing scrapping.
The NYC 3rd-rail electric into New York City is still operational, but service was taken over by the dual-mode FL9s. Those were eventually replaced with the dual-mode P32-DM dual-mode Genesis and the EMD DM30AC, and those will eventually be replaced by a dual-mode Siemens Charger variant. There was also EMU car service, which was handled by all-steel EMUs from 1906-1973, and then replaced with Metro North's M1A and M3A EMU cars.
The western operation was at Cleveland Union Terminal, under a jointly-owned subsidiary that NYC had the controlling interest in.
In the 'teens, the Van Sweringen brothers, who controlled the Erie, C&O, Nickel Plate, Pere Marquette, Wheeling & Lake Erie and Hocking Valley, decided to build Cleveland's equivalent of Grand Central Terminal. It would serve multiple railroads (the Erie, B&O, NYC, and NKP) and provide connections to interurban lines, including a proposed line by the Van Sweringens.
Cincinnati would not allow the operation of steam locomotives in the downtown area and the tracks were planned to be under the station, so the terminal would have to be electrified. Since New York Central was to be the primary operator of the terminal services and maintain the electric locomotives, they went with Alco-GE for the design.
Alco-GE came up with the P-1, which used the 2-C-C-2 wheel arrangement that also found favor in the PRR GG1 and New Haven EP-3s. It generated 3030hp and had 70mpg gearing. The P-Motor was an ungainly-looking machine, with either a cab that looked to small or a frame that looked too long. They operated off of overhead catenary, because they weren't stuck with tight clearances from old existing tunnels.
The P-1s were a success, but CUT really wasn't. It was oddly located, and many of the tenants didn't care for the added time of the power change going in and out. The Erie, despite being a Van Sweringen line, didn't use CUT until 1948, when diesel technology had progressed enough to let them bypass the power change.
By 1951, the electrification was eliminated, and so the P-1s were sent to GE and reconfigured for use on the 660V third-rail DC on Lines East. The conversion to P-2as resulted in significant weight savings with no loss of power or tractive effort. The lower-voltage motors that were installed had thinner insulation and more windings, resulted in a horsepower increase to 4243 hp.
The P-2as immediately sent many of the older T-motors into retirement. The P-Motors held down the premier trains from Croton-Harmon to GCT through the Penn Central merger, but the arrival of the FL9s and reduction of passenger service saw them all parked and scrapped by 1972.
It is bizarre that the New York Central, who was always so style conscientious, owned such brutish and boxy electric locomotives
One of the Cleveland Union Terminal P-1s during their first life. From this angle, you can see the gawky proportions of the P-Motors. It was still fairly new at this point in it's life, and so NYC had them painted in solid black with Cleveland Union Terminal lettering. Later on, NYC gave up on the pretense of CUT being an independent, jointly-owned line, and they painted them in NYC lightning stripes.
CUT #1071 rolling out of Cleveland.
NickD said:CUT #1071 rolling out of Cleveland.
This looks like a street car body being transported via train than its looks like a locomotive.
I keep wanting to type Cincinatti Union Terminal instead of Cleveland Union Terminal. What's funny is that there was both a Cleveland Union Terminal and a Cincinatti Union Terminal, they both opened within 4 years of each other, they both were envisioned as a Grand Central Terminal equivalent, and both were ultimately kind of a white elephant.
Cleveland Union Terminal was the brainchild of the Van Sweringen brothers, who were real estate and railroad moguls and lived in Cleveland. They envisioned a massive complex with the northern portion of the terminal for interurban service and the southern set of tracks for intercity rail service. The portion of the station above the interurban tracks was called the Traction Concourse and the portion above the intercity train tracks was called the Steam Concourse. The Van Sweringen brothers envisioned a network of interurban lines extending from the CUT in all directions, and even went as far as acquiring right-of-ways for some of the lines.
Site preparation began in 1922, and approximately 2,200 buildings were demolished to make room. It was the second largest excavation project in the world, after the Panama Canal. Construction began in 1926, and structural work was completed by 1927, and the Terminal Tower opened to its first tenants in 1928. . From its completion until 1964, the Terminal Tower was the tallest building in North America outside of New York City. Three other office buildings, the Medical Arts Building, Builders Exchange Building, and Midland Building, were built in addition to the Terminal Tower and were completed in 1929 and the existing Hotel Cleveland, built in 1918, was connected to the complex. Cleveland Union Terminal was dedicated and officially opened in 1930. The Higbee Company also moved it's main store to CUT in 1931, and Cleveland also relocated their post office into the complex in 1934 as well.
Cleveland Union Terminal proved to be rather unpopular with the railroads that served Cleveland. In fact in 1919, before construction even began, the Pennsylvania Railroad already backed out of the project and decided to continue using their existing Cleveland facilities. To access CUT, which was in downtown Cleveland, it required deviating from the quicker route along Lake Erie. Several of east–west routes on the circuit of trains bound east from Chicago through northern Ohio also bypassed the city outright, traveling slightly to the south and passing through Akron and Youngstown, as in the case of B&O and Erie mainlines. And as the city of Cleveland would not allow trains to operate under steam power near the downtown area, trains were forced to switch from steam to electric power at a suburban yard in either Collinwood or Linndale when heading inbound and then do the reverse on the way out at another yard. The Erie Railroad, which was part of the Van Sweringen's own railroad empire, even decided to bail on CUT, because they couldn't afford the electric transfer and also continued using their own station. That left just the Baltimore & Ohio, New York Central, and the Nickel Plate operating out of Cincinatti Union Terminal. It also didn't help that the terminal was opening during the Great Depression and also missed the heyday of passenger service. WWII brought a brief revival until about 1948, but ridership tapered off extremely hard after that.
As a result, some lines began to bypass the station entirely, heading along the lake route, and some trains even stopped serving the city altogether. For example, the New York Central's Lake Shore Limited and New England States dropped Cleveland from the schedule, particularly telling in that NYC had the majority share in the terminal railroad and handled all electric operations and still didn't want to go there. The Erie did eventually come to the table in 1948, when diesel locomotives allowed them to bypass the power change at Linndale and Collinwood, and the N&W also began operating to Cleveland in 1964 after the N&W/NKP/Wabash merger, but that was a temporary blip. By the beginning of 1966, the Baltimore & Ohio had terminated all trains that served Cleveland, as had the N&W, and a year later the New York Central had discontinued all named trains that had run through Cleveland.
CUT limped on until 1970, by which point it was just served by Erie-Lackawanna, with some commuter runs and an unnamed Youngstown-Cleveland train, and a handful of Penn Central trains. The PC's Chicago-bound trains stopping at the terminal included an unnamed remnant of the Empire State Express and another unnamed train. East-bound, there was an unnamed successor to the New England States, as well as two other unnamed trains. Southwest-bound there was an Indianapolis-destined remnant of the Southwestern Limited and an Ohio State Limited remnant bound for Columbus. When Amtrak was formed, they tried running the Lake Shore out of CUT, but after just 7 months they found the rent to high and moved service over to a newly-built facility on the site of the former PRR Cleveland Union Depot. That left just Conrail running out of CUT with the Erie-Lackawanna commuter runs that they inherited, and those went away in 1977. Cleveland Union Depot has not seen intercity passenger service ever since, although there have been attempts at reviving it as recently as 2021. I'm unsure how they plan to accomplish that, since most of the platform area was demolished in the 1980s and converted to parking when it was rebranded to a mall, known as Tower City.
Cincinatti Union Terminal, commonly abbreviated to just CIN to avoid confusion with Cleveland Union Terminal's CUT, did not have any specific masterminds behind it, but was actually a joint effort between the city, who wanted to reduce 5 stations shared between 7 railroads to just one, and the railroads, who wanted to get their stations to a location safe from flooding from the Ohio River. Planning actually began as early as 1884, but WWI and the Depression of '20-'21, as well as getting seven railroads on the same page, pushed things back until July of 1927. The seven railroads involved were the New York Central (through subsidiary Cleveland, Cincinatti, Chicago & St. Louis, aka The Big Four Route), Baltimore & Ohio, Chesapeak & Ohio, Louisville & Nashville, Norfolk & Western, Pennsylvania Railroad, and the Southern Railway.
Construction began in 1928 by regrading the Mill Creek valley to a point nearly level with the surrounding city, an effort that required 5.5 million cubic yards of fill. Other work included the construction of mail and express terminals, an engine terminal, power house, a coach yard, viaducts over the Mill Creek, and the railroad approaches to Union Terminal. Construction on the terminal building itself began in August 1929, shortly before the Great Depression, and construction was finished six months ahead of schedule at a final cost of $41.5 million. The terminal was put into emergency operation on March 19, 1933 because another Ohio River flood forced the closure of four train stations in the city, but the official opening of the station was on March 31, 1933. At this event, B&O directr John J Cornwell notably stated that passenger stations were declining in use, and that the building's completion came after its need had passed. Not exactly an auspicious start.
Union Terminal opened during the Great Depression, a time of decline in train travel. Its early years therefore experienced relatively low passenger traffic and it never really operated at full capacity. By 1939, local newspapers were already describing the station as a white elephant. While it had a brief revival in the 1940s, because of World War II, it declined in use through the 1950s into the 1960s, and by the late 1950s the Union Terminal Company began searching for other uses for the building. The station had a capacity of 216 trains per day but train service decreased from 51 per day in 1953 to 24 per day in 1962. On Amtrak's formation, they cut back Cincinnati's service to just two routes a day, subsequently reduced to just one. Amtrak scheduled the terminal to close in October 1972, after 18 months of Amtrak service. The terminal would this be the first major station it abandoned in favor of a new station.
The Union Terminal Company was left with an empty building, no income, and significant debt. It sold the building and rail yard to Southern Railway, which was expanding its freight operations. The railroad turned the passenger yard into a freight yard, and planned on removing the terminal's train concourse to allow additional height for its piggyback operations. The Southern Railway announced the demolition plans and allowed interested parties time to remove the concourse's murals. Cincinnati ultimately refused to grant Southern permits to demolish the whole building, instead designating it a local landmark. Southern ripped down the main concourse in 1974, and then sold the remainder of the terminal to the city. Attempts to turn it into a mall foundered in the '80s, and a museum moved in 1986 and began renovating what was left. In 1991, as a result of renovations, Amtrak returned to CIN with the 3-times-a-week Cardinal. The station was also renovated again in 2018.
DjGreggieP said:NickD said:CUT #1071 rolling out of Cleveland.
This looks like a street car body being transported via train than its looks like a locomotive.
Kind of a result of being an electric locomotive. While the carbody isn't empty, there's transformers and switch gear and a steam generator and all sorts of stuff, there is less stuff to pack in then a diesel, where you're trying to package one or more diesel engines and main generators and auxiliary generators and cooling systems and fuel tanks. What is weird is that New York Central and Alco-GE didn't try to pretty it up any, considering how style-conscientous the NYC is. Maybe it's due to the fact that these weren't running in long-haul service like the Milwaukee Road "Little Joes" or the PRR GG1s, but were instead just hauling 17 miles around Cleveland or the 35ish miles from Manhattan to Croton-Harmon.
Now, New York Central had done a feasibility study of post-war upgrades to the railroad, including electrifying the mainline all the way out to Buffalo. There was an actual concept put forward by Alco-GE for a 5000hp 2-C-C-2 double-ended electric locomotive with Alco PA-inspired cabs on each end. The same study also listed purchase of another 100 S-1a Niagaras for both passenger and freight service on lines west of Buffalo. Improving diesel performance and post-war economics killed the study, but had it gone forward, the locomotive likely would have moved more towards a diesel-style B-B or C-C wheel arrangement. The steam locomotive-esque 2-D-2, 2-C-C-2 and 2-D-D-2 wheel arrangements for electric locomotives really fell out of favor in the post-war era.
The sketches of this locomotive can be seen on page 35 of Paul Kiefer's "A Practical Evaluation of Railroad Motive Power", which also includes the test results in the Niagara vs. E7 comparison held by NYC.
https://milwaukeeroadarchives.com/Steam/NewYorkCentralAPracticalEvaluationofRailroadMotivePower1948.pdf
Interesting to note that the locomotive has pantographs on the roof, suggesting that from Croton-Harmon to Buffalo would have had overhead catenary. Probably the 3rd-rail would have stayed on the south end of the line, and the locomotive would have also had 3rd-rail shoes to get into Grand Central. New Haven's electric passenger locomotives, like the EP-2, EP-3, EP-5 and EP-5, were all configured in a similar manner.
One of the New York Central R2 freight motors after being sold to the Chicago, South Shore & South Bend. The South Shore ran a 1500V DC overhead catenary, and the R-2s had operated on NYC's 660V DC 3rd-rail, so they were sent to GE for conversion to run on the South Shore. What was funny was that shortly beforehand, the Cleveland Union Terminal P-Motors had just gone east and been converted from CUT's 3000V DV overhead to 660V third-rail by GE, and so GE used a number of takeoff parts leftover from the P-Motors to convert the R2s for the South Shore. You can see a definite physical resemblance between the P-1 and the R-2 bodies, just that the R-2 lacked the long "porches" on either end as a result of the R-2's shorter C-C wheelbase.
A side view of an R-2, with an "800" peeking into the frame. If that looks like the nose of a "Little Joe" electric, you're right, kind of. They weren't called that on the South Shore. Those big electrics were originally designed in conjunction with Soviet Union and GE engineers and built and tested at GE's Erie facilities. GE constructed twenty of the big 5000+hp 2-D-D-2 electrics, as well as a cache of spare parts, but before they could be shipped to Mother Russia, the State Department stepped in and forbid their sale. All dressed up with nowhere to go, Milwaukee Road made a bid of $1 million for all 20 locomotives and the spare parts, about scrap value in 1948, and GE even accepted but then the Milwaukee Road board of directors refused to release the funds. After that deal fell through, GE sold five of them and all the spare parts to a railroad in Brazil, while the South Shore snapped up three of the locomotives, simply referring to them as "800s". Two years later, Milwaukee Road returned and made the same $1 million offer to GE, only to learn that 8 of the locomotives and all the spare parts had been sold. They were in need of the power, due to the Korean War and a coal mine strike that sent all available diesels east, and so they bought them anyway. While the Little Joes lasted only until 1974, when the Milwaukee Road de-electrified the Pacific Coast Extension, the South Shore 800s lasted until 1983 (with two of them being preserved). And the ones that went to Brazil lasted until 1999, 51 years after construction.
A South Shore 800 with a caboose hop at Hammond, Indiana. I'm curious about what the "The Little Train That Could" decal applied under the cab is all about.
Two of the three South Shore 800s lead a freight at Dune Acres, Indiana in 1977. By this point in time, the Milwaukee Road's 12 "Little Joes" had been reduced to razor blades and the Pacific Coast Extension was no longer electrified.
Two GP7s, purchased secondhand from the Chesapeake & Ohio, are paired up with a pair of 800s on a freight at Burns Harbor, Indiana.
CSS&SB #802 with two new GP38-2s cut in farther back in the train, likely being delivered to the railroad. For whatever reason, the South Shore purchased their GP38-2s in a yellow and black that almost made them look ex-C&NW at first blush, but then later on painted them into the orange and red that they used on their older equipment
All three of the South Shore's three 800s gathered at Michigan City. I remain a little baffled why Alco-GE designed the cabs with an EMD E3/E6 style noses, instead of using the Alco FA/PA nose. Alco had introduced the FA and PA in 1946, so it's not like these locomotives predated that design philosophy.
914Driver said:
Doing a bit of searching, that is ATSF's Albuquerque, NM shops, circa 1943. On the "flying" engine, you can see the ATSF lettering on the cab side, and on the second engine back, you can see the #1969 on the dome, which means that engine is a 1912-1913 era 2-10-2, built as an oil-burner.
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