Nostalgia & History > Thirty Thursday: GE version

In the summer of 1974, D&H was short of road power.  Semi-parent N&W came to the rescue, as they had on the past, with a slug of leased power.  Whereas in the past it had  been N&W RS11s or power from fellow Derco road Erie Lackawanna, this time is was a big slug of high nose U30s.  They ran in solid sets for several months.

Here at KF cabin at the base of Richmondville Hill, a matched set is going through the crossovers and bridging West Creek following a meet.  The engine noise, as the train digs into the 1.3% grade, is filling the valley.

That string of green boxcars behind the power is all ex-Penn Central 40 footers, at this point owned by Walter Rich's Fonda Johnstown and Gloversville.  Remember a scandal of the era, where a block of 200-some boxcars  stolen from Penn Cenrtal, by some mafia operation and lettered for the La Salle and Bureau County?  This is them, or at least a small sampling of them.

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march_hare Wrote:
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>
> Remember a scandal of the era,
> where a block of 200-some boxcars  stolen from
> Penn Central, by some mafia operation and lettered
> for the La Salle and Bureau County?

In that same time frame, there was a similar collection of ex-PC boxcars with HBS marks on the Hoboken Shore, a small switching road in Hoboken, NJ.

Great photo.

I joined D&H mechanical Dept in mid -'75...

They had borrowed NW U36B engines...

Didn't work out well, with that much power (current)available for starting, the 4 T/motors were subject to burning out
If trying to start... So they had current limiting feature that would not allow either quick loading, or heavy loading...

This they "couldn't pull sick person off the pot!!" .,., they weren't much use to the D&H, and somehow were sent back...

W.

Posted from iPhone

The Dash 7s were a bit better, anyway Wes you just needed better engineers! Case in point, boat anchor EUWCM coming
down off Cajon Pass on the SP with one of those dreaded GEs on the point.

Out

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Norfolk and Western No. 8535 was a U30B, built Oct. 1971 and retired Feb. 1979.

wcamp1472 Wrote:
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> I joined D&H mechanical Dept in mid -'75...
>
> They had borrowed NW U36B engines...

N&W had U30B's as pictured. SCL, Conrail, and Auto Train had 36B's, plus 33B's on PC, RI, and SCL.