756 of the 1,167 originally transferred over.
Wabash, you are living far in the past, especially when it comes to Conrail. Your remarks fit the first phase of CR but the management team did take it out of government ownership to the open market and on to a really well run railroad with well maintained and good equipment. Conrail Day One was quite different than the last day by many miles and by millioons of dollars returned on the investment.
You can count me among those who misses Conrail, I mean the Class 1 powerhouse Conrail as we used to know it. Big Blue was my favorite railroad, and now I can’t honestly say I have a favorite.
As railfans, we’re all entitled to our opinions about who/what we like and don’t like. But we need to get the facts straight. Conrail was indeed a success story. It was born out of the rubble of all those bankrupt and decrepit northeast railroads. Yes, at startup they were losing $1million a day in taxpayer money. But they turned it around, and a profitable company was built from it, and in fact the government spun it off at a profit.
The fact that Conrail, I mean the independent Class 1, no longer exists, is due to their success, not failure. CR was so desireable that CSX and NS went into a bidding war, with the result being that CR stock went to $115 per share. That was a huge change from 1976.
I never had the honor of riding a CR locomotive. They certainly inherited alot of “deferred maintenance” locos from the predecessor railroads, but they soon retired these and invested in a lot of modern power.
For starters, if it was built before 1998 and it has air conditioning, then it is an ex-Conrail. Only US RR not buying air conditioning on new power in the 1990s was…NS! Sounds like a bad case of the N&W stubborns. And, that’s just for starters…
I’d go one step farther. No Conrail = No Staggers Act = No railroad renaissance.
-And let’s not forget toilets in the locos vs. bags issued to crews.
some ex-conrail units still have the RS3L horn on them which is nice to hear again. well… to me conrail was best railroad to work for as engineers and conductors say.
If you want to put your trust in this guys web site you need to stay as lost as he is, Ive sent him messages of corrections before and nothing ever happened, and to read his list NS never owned a sd40 a gp 38 a dash9 -8 and every GE they took from con-fail is dead at chatt. and they con-fail merger didnt happen ti 2000 late. the engine number are wrong but who cares about con-fail anyways.live in your fantisy, I dont care.
Here’s a link of sightings of NS locos still in CR blue. The thread is about 15 pages long and I have the link to the most recent page:
http://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=53800&start=210
Obviously, after over 10 years the blue is pretty faded, but we’re not even talking about those which have been repainted to NS black&white.
Trying to decipher your comment about 2000, but hard to interpret. Something about the merger/breakup, but this happened in 1999.
If you will please look at these couple links, from the link I posted above, you will see there are indeed a couple recent shots of ex-CR GE’s, alive and well and not in Chattanooga.
http://kaback9.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1988569
http://chuchubob.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1927950
http://kaback9.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1988669
There’s others, but you get the idea.
I chose my senior Independent Study in college to be “Can Conrail Succeed?” Had most of the background info the summer before I wrote it and had a good time with it.
Anyone know of any books out there on Conrail, dealing with the finances, operations, etc and not locomotives? Conrail Commodities is a great reference. A book on Stanley Crain would be well worth reading.
ed
Yeah, NS DOES own SD40s and GP38s and Dash 8s and 9s. I’ve seen them all. If you don’t want to believe me, then don’t.
As a matter of fact, the loco I saw yesterday was NS 5286, a GP38-2 in Conrail Quality paint. If you look at that website, it will say exactly that.
I’ve referenced that site dozens of times, and seen photos, and everything on the site matches up with photos. Check out photos of NS locos on Railroad Picture Archives, and compare them with that website.
Sorry, but I don’t think it’s me that’s living in a fantasy world…
Roflmao quit your whining and begging i aint worried about his site im not concered on your opinion and its your fantisy these is a few dash 9 running out there but most of that junk is dead, and i dont haft to look at pictures i run these things everyday, and the gp38 and sd40 i switch and run locals with are not ex con-fail engines there original southern railway issue, sorry if the truth hurts
go ahead hit the report abuse button get the modertors involved it dont matter this thread has run its course unless we start talking about elenore waving at the blue trains in the fog
Conrail never had dash-9s, true. But still plenty of gp38-2s from Conrail running around. And Sd40-2s. C40-8ws. C40-8s. SD60Ms. SD60Is.
A locomotve is only as good as the maintenenace it receives. I’ve had plenty of engines, both ex-CR and ex-NS, that were epic failures.
Not much left stored on NS, either. They even dusted off the 8700s and brought them out of storage. Even the SD50s that aren’t in the current rebuild program were brought out of Juniata and back on the rails.
And Elvis is alive. He’s a goat farmer in Oregon.
Not to split hairs here, but I notice that wabash1 didn’t include the ‘’-2’'s for the GP38’s and SD40’s that he said were not owned by ConRail but by Southern Rwy. Does what he posted make more sense if we ask if there are ex-SR early GP38’S and SD40’s that are now owned by NS that he operates ? Which appears to be in the western part of the NS system = former SR lines perhaps ?, since he respected the Rock Island and has seen the TRRA SW1500’s first-hand, based on his recent posts.
- Paul North.
I think the straight SD40s and GP38s are long gone. Both CR or NS.
Some could argue the photos were all photoshopped[:-,][:-^]
I seen a couple of Conrail engines still in the blue livery going through here recently—maybe a number patch but?[%-)]
That would be A LOT of work for everyone to Photoshop all those!
And I believe there are no unpatched CR locos. I think they all have different numbers now, both NS and CSX.