Nostalgia & History > Friday F-unit: an inaugural run, no less

36 years ago this week, it was already pretty tough to find an F unit on an inaugural run. (Last runs were much more common.)

But here we are in April 1981, watching the first trip of Amtrak's Maple Leaf from Toronto resting in the late afternoon shadows of the Albany Rensselaer station.  When the foliage comes out fully in another week or two, the shadows will be much more dense.

This is in my collection as a trader from the late Jim Odell.  I was living in Denver at the time, so I don't know the details.  Did the FL9 come all the way through from Toronto?  The normal operating pattern would be for an F40 to bring the train into Albany, with an engine change to an FL9 for the run down to GCT.  But the FLops did go west on occasion.  The sign on the front of the locomotive leads me to believe it came in from Toronto that way.

And what's the deal with that weird baggage car, first out?  I don't remember ever seeing one like that.  Was that a HEP generator?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/28/17 11:39 by march_hare.

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Great photo. Thanks for sharing it. Yes, the first car appears to be a "power-baggage" car, old baggage cars that had been converted to have an HEP generator in them. They ran on Northeast Corridor trains, too, when more Amfleet was delivered than could be handled by handful of HEP-equipped E-60 locomotives. You can find lots of photos of GG-1's pulling Amfleet trains that have a power-bag providing HEP for the cars. That's the cleanest power-bag I've ever seen a photo of.

And yes, power-bags operated continuously, even in the Park Avenue tunnel, on the platform at Grand Central, and in the Hudson and East River Tunnels and while the trains were in Penn Station New York.

amazed to see 3 different paint phases on the same train.