This is another Ray Wetzel slide that he was kind enough to let me share.
A pair of Lehigh & Hudson River C420s await their next assignment in September of 1975. I personally think that this was one of the coolest operations in Northern NJ at the time.
C420’s looked best in black and old gold (Monon). I remember most Monon freights from my high school days being pulled by two or three of them and the “Thoroughbred” being led by a single high-nose C420.
I saw the thread title and thought to myself that it seemed better placed 30 years ago…guess I was right. I neglected to notice it was Mr. Freericks posting!
No matter how ‘scruffy’ ALCo’s looked, they wore that grime with a certain pride, and always appeared that they were ready to do whatever was asked of them. [2c]
Nice looking engines, and that photo makes one appreciate how far the railroads have come since then. I started reading Trains at around that time, when the pages were filled with articles about bankrupt roads, featherbedding, and the very real possibility that the Northeast would soon be without rail service…we sometimes forget that the good old days weren’t so good.
That’s about the same time I started reading TRAINS (1972 for me). It was all quite depressing at the time.
But my introduction to TRAINS was finding my dad’s stash in the attic (all boys find their dad’s stash of magazines in the attic, my dad’s just happened to be TRAINS instead).
I would climb up ther and read an issue from cover to cover, with the dust swirling around me and the light cascading down from the air vents.