i always loved looking up pictures of Montana Rail Link just to see the scenery they run through. had no idea that was MR track at one point. awesome little history lesson there.
As a Milwaukean, love the history on the Milwaukee Road. Great story as always.
Thanks so much for putting this together and please keep it coming.
The last run of the Erie-Lackawanna's E8s with the old Stillwell coaches in 1974. After this, the Stillwells were replaced with modern stainless steel push-pull coaches. And then the E8s were replaced by GE U34CHs. And then EL was folded up into Conrail and NJDOT took over the commuter operations from EL and Central Railroad of New Jersey.
EL E8A leaving Hoboken terminal with a string of Stillwell coaches
EL #819 and #817 haze blue smoke as they leave Chicago with the Lake Cities Limited. It's interesting that the two E-units are only 2 numbers apart and yet #817 has four portholes and #819 has none.
EL #822 clicks off the miles on her way to Port Jervis with a string of old clerestory-roof coaches.
EL (ex-DL&W) #818 and (ex-Erie) #826 sit at Port Jervis with a Binghamton-Hoboken overnight mail train.
Train #1, the Erie Lackawanna Limited, rolls into Chicago. The large amount of head-end cars and mismatched consist are indicative '60s era passenger trains.
E8s and Stillwells at Black Rock Cut in 1971
This is a photograph of Milwaukee Class A 4-4-2 Number 2. One of four streamlined Atlantics built by Alco for the Milwaukee Road, they were the first steam engines in the world designed for continuous operation at speeds over 100mph. They were also the first to be designed and built as an exclusively streamlined locomotive. The four Atlantics kept a 6 1/4 hour schedule with 9 car trains at average speeds of 100+ mph. The fastest official recorded speed was 112mph, making them one of the fastest locomotives in the world.
In reply to Recon1342 :
Milwaukee Road actually offered one of the Atlantics to the St. Louis Museum of Transportation. The problem was MoT was really strapped for space at the time and was trying to just get one steam engine of every wheel configuration. They already had a 4-4-2, a non-streamlined Chicago & Northwestern engine, so they passed on it. What if Milwaukee Road had offered them one of the Hiawatha 4-6-4s? Well, presumably the same thing would have happened, as they already had a Nickel Plate 4-6-4 as well. And so no Milwaukee Road Hiawatha engines were saved.
A Central Railroad of New Jersey "Train Master" hustles commuters home.
A CNJ GP-40 at Newark. Confusingly, the Central Railroad of New Jersey was also referred to as Jersey Central, or CNJ, or CRRoNJ, as well as going by the nickname of The Big Little Railroad.
Also confusing was the sheer amount of different paint schemes that the CNJ seemed to use.
There was the "toothpaste tube" dark green with twin imitation gold stripes.
A medium blue with gold "toothpaste tube" stripes
A light blue with an orange-yellow
A very basic dark blue with gold details
Dark green with no side stripes but with yellow chevrons on the front and back. This seems pretty close to a Reading paint scheme, and at the time Reading had something like a 56% share in CNJ. Coincidence?
And the Coast Guard-inspired red with a white stripe, known as the "Red Baron" scheme.
And there are probably a few one-off variants in there that I missed. Because the CNJ was habitually either bankrupt or on the verge of their next bankruptcy, they could seldom afford to paint all their locomotives at once, so this resulted in lashups in multiple paint schemes that made the CNJ look even scruffier than it already did.
A CNJ Train Master running long hood forward through Elizabeth, NJ
A CNJ Baldwin RS12 and a Fairbanks-Morse H15-44 sit side by side. CNJ certainly never lacked for variety in motive power
Norfolk Southern has a CNJ heritage unit in the tangerine and blue scheme. Kind of odd, because the dark green with gold stripes was the more commonly seen paint scheme.
Most of the Conrail family represented by heritage units. Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines, Ann Arbor Railroad and Lehigh & Hudson River Railroad are not represented, while Erie and DL&W being represented as separate units is a little odd, because they merged 16 years before the formation of Conrail. Edit: Also just noticed that there is a Penn Central unit and then a Pennsylvania unit, which seems a little superfluous. Either there should be a PRR unit and a NYC unit or just a Penn Central unit.
CNJ's top train, the Blue Comet, behind one of their handsome Wooten firebox-equipped Pacifics. Inaugurated at the end of 1929, it was dead by 1941, never making it to the diesel era, a victim of WWII era cutbacks, declining ridership and CNJ's frail financial status.
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