Nostalgia & History > One way tickets to the scrap heap. More tales from the crypts!

Stored units are never a pleasant thing to see. If you want an abject lesson in where the railroad industry is today, check out Cumberland, Altoona, Enola, Roanoke, or, a dozen other places around the country. The roads don't have to worry about switching capacity anymore, since PSR[Positively Stupid Railroading} is destroying any semblance of customer service. So yard and shop areas are now locomotive parking lots. At least there is a possibility that these units will turn a wheel again since their time is not yet up.
Not so for the poor souls in this thread. Along with so many other upheavels in the 70s, railroad mergers were signals to the combined roads to cull the herds of old or exotic power. Along with everything else about this decade in railroading, it was another gut punch to the fans, especially east of the Mississippi, who were traumatized by the lightning like changes in the industry. For the morbidly curious, the dead lines of power presented the opportunity to have one last look, and get that one last shot, of what was once part of their day to say railfanning. For the railroads themselves, it was junk whose time at come.

top and middle...purge of older Alcos was well underway in 1975. These units were stored at Bay View yard in Baltimore

bottom... a little later in the decade and 150 miles west of Baltimore, Chessie was starting its own purge of the multitudes of GP9s and 7s.

Bill Rettberg
Bel Air, MD

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I think these 3 photos tell the whole story of what happened to these units.

Bill Rettberg
Bel Air, MD

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top...guarantee you that was a one way ticket

middle and bottom...Backshop at Altoona. These guys were heading for a razor blade remake in the early 70s.

Bill Rettberg
Bel Air, MD

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A  Conrail purge in action were these scenes at Pavonia Yard in Camden NJ. at the eand of 1976

Bill Rettberg
Bel Air, MD



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/13/20 04:13 by Roadjob.

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top...Cleveland 1978

middle...Another Altoona scalping, mid 70s

bottom...Harrisburg 1976

Bill Rettberg
Bel Air, MD

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Some EL mess

 top...Saddest deadline was this long line of EL power stretching into the horizon in Altoona in 1977. 

middle...Hornell 1975 Dead units and one well done.

bottom...Hornell 1975, this was a Jersey Central unit, now a parts salvage for EL.



 

Bill Rettberg
Bel Air, MD

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Great shots but of course sad.
Dead lines enabled one to see rare units, engines you missed getting pictures of before but
on the other hand that was it.
Gary

The CNJ unit was involved in a wreck of ES-99 (Elizabethport/CNJ to Scranton/EL) in the Delaware Water Gap in 1975.

Sad thread, but interesting units in the photos.  It's a shame that none of the former New Haven EP-5 Jets could be saved for posterity.

Rich

What a collection of locomotives! So much unloved iron! Thanks for sharing.

Thanks once again Bill Rettberg for your outstanding photos.  One thing to add to the B&O/Chessie photo of locomotives out-of-service; the GP-9 #6607 was one of the Chessie engines used in the Commuter Service for the Maryland Dept. of Transportation prior to when the State of Maryland purchased their own rebuilt F units for the service.  That locomotive is currently in the collection of the B&O R.R. Museum in Baltimore where it did operate for a few years, but is out-of-service due to mismanagement at the museum.
Here is a photo of it pulling a small passenger train over the Mt. Clare line from the B&O museum to the branch line that goes down to Mt. Clare "A" yard in Southwest Baltimore.  Photo is by William D. Hakkarinen.
John in White Marsh, Maryland

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Roadjob Wrote:
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> bottom...Hornell 1975, this was a Jersey Central unit, now a parts salvage for EL.

Wrecked on the EL 9/75, CNJ 3069 was sold to PNC (PNC 40), then to MILW in 9/77 and scrapped in Milwaukee in 1980.

Roadjob Wrote:
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> bottom...Hornell 1975, this was a Jersey Central unit, now a parts salvage for EL.

Wrecked on the EL 9/75, CNJ 3069 was sold to PNC (PNC 40), then to MILW in 9/77 and scrapped in Milwaukee in 1980.

That "See-Through" E-8 at JBS is something that I never saw before !

New773 Wrote:
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> Roadjob Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
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> > bottom...Hornell 1975, this was a Jersey
> Central unit, now a parts salvage for EL.
>
> Wrecked on the EL 9/75, CNJ 3069 was sold to PNC
> (PNC 40), then to MILW in 9/77 and scrapped in
> Milwaukee in 1980.

I wonder if the MILW purchased that unit to gather parts to rebuild several of their SD40-2's that were wrecked in their terrible head on collision of February 26, 1977 in Pandora, WA.