I’m curious what is the attraction to Conrail? All the locomotives seem to me to be painted the same color of blue. I’m from out on the prairie. I’d be interested in your thoughts. Thanks
1-That is a great shade of blue. Royal blue is much better than the dark CSX or MRL blues. Certainly better than black.
2-When the scheme first came out (on ex NYC GP40 3091) is was not cluttered the way the later Conrails were.
3-Conrail was what Perlman was trying to build out of the New York Central. A complete change from Saunders, Bevan and the rest of the Penn Central-Pennsylvania crowd.
4-Things looked pretty bleak in the 1970s and Conrail offered promise.
5-How could you not like a railroad that started on April Fools day ?
6-Trains magazine had several well done Conrail maps in the 1970s and 1980s and you could try to figure out how those bankrupts fit together.
And as it turned out (with some help), Conrail was NO ONES FOOL !!![:o)]
Back when I became a railfan in 82 I saw LOTS of Penn Central and even Reading colors but it was something about the “can opener” that caught my eye.
I guess some people became railfans because of certain RR colors but with me it could have been any RR and I’d still be a fan of all of them.
I just like Conrail the most. [8D]
For some one who grew up with the DL&W, EIRE, LV and the D&H and then the EL Conrail was a large shock. When the first blue beast showed up in the yards the reception by local railfans was to say the least mixed. But we got use to it. The good thing was we saw a large mix of paint schemes for a while. A couple of days ago I was scan some slides in to the computer that I took in the late 70’s and early 80’s and thought how funny it seem to think that CR photos would be considered historic. But now its gone and some railfans are happy when the see a solid lash up of CR blue.
It had an interesting past. It’s two merger stories also made it popular. CR is also famous from the famous railroads it came from. That’s the reason that I enjoy the Conrail system.
Richard
BNSF nut: Very interesting. Other than the basic blue,and the picture in the post by cpbloom above yours, I’ve never seen any other Conrail paint schemes. In fact, I’d never seen the one above until recently. Did Conrail run a lot of trains in pedecessor railroad’s liveries with a Conrail “patch?”, or did they paint everything right away, like UP does?
Conrail was very unique. I liked their Conrail Quality logo a little better than their original Conrail logo. I miss seeing Conrail go through up at Effingham Illinois. Conrail basically saved a big part of Eastern railroading when it consolidated the 6 other defunct railroads.
Go visit http://crcyc.railfan.net/home.html
You can see a lot of “patched” and maybe even some unpatched predecessors RR schemes. They didn’t paint it all right away, but by 1984 I saw nothing but blue. Thats only 8 years; you can still see some CNW stuff on UP 10 years later (plus SP). The best at not painting their stuff right away has got to be CSX.
Conrail was patched together from several bankrupts, and bankrupts don’t have a lot of well maintained modern locomotives. Taxpayers gave Conrail a couple of billion to rebuild and they got hundreds of SD40-2 and GP40-2 as soon as they could.
Conrail turned itself around from a company that lost millions a year to one that made millions, much of that happening after deregulation, and Conrail being set free from the Government to become an independent operation…The last engines that were built in the Conrail Quality scheme, especially the SD70MACS and 80MACS looked sharp in my opinion with the ‘whiteface scheme’. I also like the order of SD70 Spartan Cabs built in 1998 to NS specs, but in Conrail Quality paint. Nowadays on NS in the Altoona area, Conrail Quality can still be found on the SD40-2 Helper pool that operates between Altoona and Johnstown. SD80MACS that run on the mine runs on the South Fork Secondary are also a treat, especially the units still in Conrail whiteface. But more and more of the SD40-2 helper pool and the SD80MACS are being painted into NS Black…so it is a real treat to snap pics of a train with Conrail Blue units nowadays. Dave Williams @ nsaltoonajohnstown@yahoogroups.com
CR is one of the few modern railroads that had essentially the same paint scheme throughout its life. There were variations in the lettering, and the whitefaces towards the “end,” but everything was blue.
That’s not to say that other RRs haven’t hung onto one scheme, but others got a different look with every order of locomotives…
The transformation of a bunch of losers into a winning system, at a time the people said that the RR in the NE was dead, is impressive.
The same old blue paint scheme notwithstanding then, most Conrail fans were rooting for the underdog ? How did that feeling change when Conrail was sold out?
Though I wasn’t a Conrail fan, I did like their color and the name, CONRAIL, just has that government sound to it. I was shocked when I learned they had been split up, though knowing there is still a small part left with Conrail Shared Assets.
Being only 45 I can still remember all those older railroads like ITC, Rock Island etc. Sad to see all of them do CH13’s and get absorbed etc. [:(]
Conrail took a bunch of seemingly helpless lines and, though it took awhile, made an efficient and well run system out of it. They seemed for the most part to know what they were doing It is unfortunate they didn’t last, they were our local railroad here and when the trains were running, put on quite a show. I will admit that I never cared for the “Conrail Quality” scheme.
Other than a lot of federal money, what would you say was behind the rise of Conrail from the PennCentral ashes? Did they do anything than before? Or did management / operating culture have a lot to do with it?
It is what I grew up around, so it is what I like.
Adrianspeeder
Murphy,
This part of the country was dominated by the New York Central and the Pennsylvania. They had the best routes and Conrail got them, along with the Erie’s main. Conrail almost had a monopoly on all of that New Jersey traffic and they did their best to keep everyone else out. Once they got their lines into great shape the other railroads like the D&H could not compete to well.
I found a roster from Conrail’s first birthday on April 1, 1977. Here is where the locomotives each started,
Pennsylvania 1,447
New York Central 1,075
Penn Central 1,046
Erie Lackawanna 228
Reading 216
Conrail 171
New York, New Haven and Hartford 159
Erie 125
Lehigh Valley 93
Central of New Jersey 78
Delaware, Lackawanna and Western 62
Peoria and Eastern 21
New York, Ontario and Western 18
Indianapolis Union 11
Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines 10
Virginian 10
Monon 9
Baltimore and Ohio 9
Niagara Junction 7
Indiana Harbour Belt 7
Cleveland Union Terminal 7
Lehigh and Hudson River 6
New York Central and Hudson River 6
Autotrain 4
Denver and Rio Grande Western 4
Ironton 1
Chesapeake and Ohio 1
Pittsburgh and Lake Erie 1
Tennessee Central 1
Murphy,
Definately, management. PennCentral was a fiasco financially and in operations. Soaring costs and declining traffic didn’t help. It still exists as a corporation, and is still untangling financials. How Conrail grew out of the other railroads is actually quite interesting … there are some good books on the subject.
It wasn’t just PRR and NYC that made up CR, of course. There was Lehigh Valley, Erie Lackawanna (earlier Erie RR and Delaware, Lackanwanna & Western RR), Reading, Central of New Jersey, and a few smaller roads.
One year after the Staggers Rail Act (which allowed railroads to compete freely) CR showed a profit. CR served this quadrant of the country really well. Many areas here, such as New Jersey, have little room for yards and sidings. Yet CR moved those trains in and out of the area like clockwork. It was a very profitable, and large, railroad.
I think that Conrail engines in their standard blue scheme are the most handsome engines in America. I guess I’m kinda partial, though.
I became interested in railroads, and railroading, just as CR was formed. And every town I have lived in, has had a CR mainline or secondary (branch). So, I’ve watched those big, blue engines my whole life. I was very dissapointed when NS and CSX split it up. Especially so since the name, and the color scheme, was completely erased from railroading. And soon, the Conrail Shared Assets areas will be competely taken over by NS and CSX … and that will be the end of the blue engines. Sad for people like me.
Jim