Any book that I’ve seen with pictures of “early” Conrail locomotives seems to have an absolute duke’s mixture of everthing under the sun. Was Conrail that hard up for motive power? It makes me wonder if some of the less popular makes and models were still being used too?
seems to be that way…they had quite a range of motive power, all of it from companies that were too broke to pay for proper track and equipment repairs… Lots of good pics and info here:
With locos coming from PC, EL, RDG, etc., there were a lot of “patch” jobs in service. Even if an engine wasn’t a patch job, it was not unusual to see an ex-EL GP35 working a local assignment on an ex-PC line, etc. A lot of the Alcos were concentrated around Mingo Junction, the Youngstown area and out of Collinwood Yard, Cleveland. I think that especially at start-up, CR was hard-pressed to cover all the assignments and so there were a lot of odd-ball locos still running. Over time, especially as they got overhaul or re-engining programs going, they were able to eliminate a lot of the undesirable power.
As a ward of the government, CONRAIL in it’s early years was basically a hodgepodge of tracks and equipment from several bankrupt or abandoned lines along with some of it’s own newly purchased stuff like B23-7s. Even Pennsy’s vaunted GG1 electrics managed to make it to CONRAIL. Throw in the fact in most of the equipment and track suffered from years of deferred maintenance and it’s a miracle the line made a dime in it’s early days.
Ultimately CONRAIL was able to make a go of it and older used and abused equipment was retired, storred, or scrapped and newer more reliable equipment as well as improved trackage made CONRAIL a major player in Northeast railroading.
Quite a few of Conrail’s engines were in poor shape, owing to years of deferred maintenance. Because of this, many engines were moved around to better suit the power situation. That’s why you got to see such colorful lashups then.
CR also had some interesting rebuild programs. The RS3M program, started by Penn Central, put the prime movers from retired E7s into Also RS3s. A few are still running today on short lines.
I know a lot of ALCOs made it to Conrail. What about th e odd-balls? Baldwins,FMs,Limas etc…
The variety of early Conrail not only came from the several RR’s that made it up but also from leaaed power during '76-78. CN, BN, SP, MP, PNC, CNW, BAR, and Sou are the RR’s i can think of off hand that had leased them power at some point during the time period. All those to go with the railroads that made up Conrail. Penn Central, Reading, Lehigh Valley, Central of New Jersey, Lehigh & Hudson River, Erie Lackawanna, and Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines.
The Pennsy retired their DR-4-4-1500’s and Sharks by the end of 1966. The New York Central by May 1967. The Central Railroad of New Jersey’s DR4-4-1500’s made it to the mid 60’s. Being a minority builder with some bad reputation for reliability early on in their history, even the more reliable RF-16 couldn’t save the company and were gone from most Class ones before Conrail was formed. Even at that they lasted from 1949 to 1966 on the Pennsy, not as quickly retired as reported elsewhere on these forums.
Source: Diesels from Eddystone: The Story of Baldwin Diesel Locomotives by Gary and Stephen Dolzall
OK, There were a handful of Baldwin switchers assigned to the Philadelphia area, mostly PRR or PRSL heritage,nearly all of them were S12s. They were retired before 1980. As I recall, there were no FM or Lima locomotives left on the Conrail predecessors’ rosters. There were,however, a pair of re-powered Lima 1200 hp road switchers, which didn’t last long. Reading “contributed” a group of re-powered Baldwins, most of those had been DS4-4-1000s.The last Alco I saw work for Conrail with an Alco engine was S2 9705 (ex-D&H, NYC, and PC). The last re-powered Alco RS3 left the roster in the early 80s. Add to the list of lessees a group of rebuilt/ repowered F7s (VERY heavily rebuilt, with new carbodies, but 567BC engines) GP9s(with Sulzer engines) from Morrison -Knudsen.
Should have been in Cincinnati (Old NYC Sharonville Yard) which played host to a good number of CR’s oddball units (Alco/Baldwin/GE and EMD F7’s plus loaners from everybody else) along with Collinwood in Cleveland. What Cincinnati rarely saw was the DeWitt geeps.
Most any CR yard in the early days had a pretty amazing variety! 59th Street in Chicago (ex-PRR) would get occasional Es, Fs and C628s, as well as ex-NH U25Bs
After the Soo Line set up Lake States Transportation in 1987, they were leasing Conrail GP 40’s still in PennCentral black with Conrail markings.
Yeah, I aways thought that was a intersting program, Especailly that quite a few are still running! (theres 3 in MD Alone!) [:D]
I was surprised to read how many of the RS3M’s made it to Conrail. Are the 3 in MD still used in service?
The Ironton Railroad’s entire “fleet” consisting of one immaculate DS44-1000 went to Conrail. It could be seen in the Allentown/Bethlehem area for the first year or so. Eventually it went to scrap. A shame as it was in excellent shape.
In addition to the collection of oddballs, misfits and just plain ancient locomotives, Conrail’s leased power was also quite eclectic: RS3’s from BN in SP&S colors, M636’s from CN, among others.
Conrail was short of power for years after it started, mainly because much of the predecessor railroads’ power was worn out. At least initially, CR kept open all the predecessors’ shops to try to keep the junk running and to rebuild units. Saw some figures once (probably about 5 years after CR started) on how many new and rebuilt locomotives had been bought or rebuilt since startup, and it was amazing; don’t remember the numbers, but both were over 1000 (possibly considerably so). I remember reading about seriously underpowered CR trains for years after startup.
Conrail was forced to use those old worn out engines because that was all they had in the early years. Eventually, they retired many of those old units and/or upgraded them. The SD40-2 helped Conrail out a lot. They were some of Conrail’s first newly built locomotives. Later came along the Dash 8 and SD80s and 70s. If you want to know about Conrail just buy the book CONRAIL; it’ll tell you a lot about Conrail.
i like the old eries
Do you know the name of the author, by chance?