I just pulled out the August 1993 issue of Trains which had a nice article about Norfolk Southern’s rebuild program for the excursion fleet that had just been completed, curious about this.
Not a mention of holding tanks anywhere.
No, the cars never got holding tanks, but they may have been in the long-term plans for the excursion fleet. As a matter of fact, the steam excusion crew at NS were just as blindsided by the shut down as anyone else, one project they were involved in at the time was the conversion of a baggage car into an updated state of the art head-end power car, then BOOM! Orders came to shut the whole thing down.
Shocked everybody here in Virginia, let me tell you! The local paper here, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, even front-paged the story. Lady Firestorm saw it first and let out such a gasp that I thought somebody died!