Nostalgia & History > Not PC enough to be invited.

Altoona's boneyard throughout the 70s was both fascinating and heart breaking. One got to see every kind of unit on the rosters of the Pennsylvania, New York Central, New Haven, and later many of the different components that made up Conrail. This was an early 70s shot of the glory that was before PC. You have to think that these E units were probably happier to die with their paints on rather than become part of the black mating worm disaster, or the mess that was Amtrak at the time.

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For historical information, almost all of the Class One Railroads, upon joining up with Amtrak, offered their passenger locomotives and passenger cars for Amtrak to purchase.  Obviously when the Amtrak personnel went out to inspect the equipment, they decided to purchase only the equipment that was in the best condition overall.  Therefore, since many former passenger train routes were being discontinued, not being obtained for Amtrak to operate, lots of older worn out locomotives and other equipment wound up being sold to private railroads and/or individuals, or in most other cases to the junk man for scrap.  Looking at these photos, my guess is these units probably were heading to the scrap yard.  Living here in the Baltimore area, and going by some of the bone yards, there were quite a few passenger E-units, such as the ones in your photos, that came down here to the Striegel Equipment Company where they wound up being scrapped.
John in White Marsh, Maryland

Black mating worm disaster! Excellent description.