That ICG-repainted RS-1, #1269, leads two RS-1s still in GM&O red as they cross the Alabama River on the Union Camp local run at Montgomery.
That ICG-repainted RS-1, #1269, leads two RS-1s still in GM&O red as they cross the Alabama River on the Union Camp local run at Montgomery.
The #1133 has been repowered by Illinois Central Gulf using a 1000hp EMD V12 out of an ex-GM&O E7, as well as receiving a roller bearing conversion. ICG only converted a limited amount of the RS-1s to EMD power, likely because the cost didn't outweigh the benefits.
Faded to a sickly pink, ICG #1112 is leading a local run out of Prattville, AL.
D&H PA-4u #18 at Amtrak's ex-NYC Albany-Rensselaer depot with Amtrak's Adirondack, alongside one of the new Rohr Turboliner trainsets in February 1977. The Turboliners were equipped with third-rail shoes, so it handled the run from New York City all the way up to Albany-Rensselaer. Shortly after Jim Shaughnessy took this photo, Amtrak would take complete control over the Adirondack, replacing the PA-4us and ex-D&RGW lightweight passenger cars with the Turboliners for the entirety of the trip.
D&H #18 has been in the news lately, because it's coming back east to D&H rails, albeit as NKP #190. But the Adirondack was also recently in the news, as Amtrak plans to resume operation of the Adirondack this April. The New York City-Montreal Adirondack is the last Amtrak to resume service after being suspended in 2020.
I had always known that Amtrak was always meant to take over the Adirondack from D&H once it got it's feet under it, and that there had been resentment from Amtrak over the D&H basically coopting the train's identity (D&H locomotives, cars, staff, even dining car dishes and tableclothes). But Rudy Garbely's book on the D&H from 1968-1991 also sheds some light on the squabbles that began almost immediately in 1974. The D&H passenger cars would spend the night at Penn Central's Mott Haven yard between southbound and northbound runs and, being Penn Central and New York City in the '70s, vandals were breaking into the D&H's cars and vandalizing them and stealing everything that wasn't nailed down, which led to D&H president Bruce Sterzing getting in screaming matches with Penn Central and Amtrak officials and ultimately ending with D&H railroad police spending the night aboard the cars. The D&H and Amtrak were also leasing dome cars from Canadian Pacific for the train, and the D&H got in hot water with CPR after repainting the dome cars into D&H colors without ever getting permission from CPR. Bruce Sterzing was also known to get pissed off over the fact that the dome car windows were frequently covered in soot from the Alco PAs and would tear into car shop staff over not cleaning the windows. The whole affair was also used as ammunition by the government to oust Sterzing, accusing him of worrying about inconsequential details while the D&H lost money, when the reality was that many of the issues bedeviling the D&H were a result of either Conrail outright sabotaging D&H service (Conrail employees admitted that their nickname for passing sidings were "D&H Mains") or the government's ill-conceived plan to make the D&H compete with Conrail.
A particular irony is that the D&H #18 still exists, but Amtrak #154, which was nearly 30 years newer, was scrapped a decade ago. Circa 1998, New York State Department of Transport, Amtrak, and the FRA agreed to a rebuild program of the seven RTL Turboliner trainsets, which when accompanied with track improvements along the Empire Corridor would create a new high-speed corridor. SuperSteel Schenectady, which operated out of the old Alco factory, was chosen to complete the rebuilds, and there have always been accusations of croneyism regarding the selection of SuperSteel Schenectady as the rebuilder. The project ran into significant delays, with the first trainset only re-entering service in April 2003, one year after the final rebuilt trainset was expected to be completed. A second rebuilt trainset entered service a couple weeks later, with a third delivered in September 2003. The rebuilt trainsets encountered immediate problems with air conditioning and other onboard systems, shoddy build quality, and reliability woes. As a result, Amtrak made the decision to permanently withdraw the two delivered trainsets, and the third trainset never entered service. The remaining four, including the #154, had been partially dismantled to prepare for overhaul, and were never rebuilt or returned to Amtrak and were scrapped a decade later. Of the delivered units, two remain stored at the yard in Brunswick, NJ, while the third was moved to New Haven, CT, with all three remaining "stored".
In other Amtrak news, passengers aboard the Downeaster were not going to be allowed to drink alcohol while within New Hampshire starting March 20th, which didn't sound very "Live Free or Die" to me. It was based on some law that is going into effect where alcohol cannot be served if it wasn’t bought in the state (again, not very "Live Free or Die"), and the alcohol served on the Downeaster is purchased in Maine. So, while it was traveling through NH, which is for all of 35 miles, passengers wouldn't be able to purchase alcohol, although they could continue to drink alcohol that they may have purchased before entering the state. But, the spokesperson for the New Hampshire Liquor Commission has now said it’s okay for the Downeaster to serve alcohol while it’s in the state. The commission is looking to change the law to give passenger trains an exemption from the state’s ban on serving liquor purchased in neighboring states (or, how about just get rid of the stupid berkeleying law altogether, hmm?). Honestly, I don't get how New Hampshire has a say on it to begin with, I would think that since Amtrak is a federally funded business, what happens on an Amtrak train isn’t really a state’s business.
A Turboliner set on Adirondack service passes by a waiting Canadian Pacific freight. After CP took over the D&H there was a lot of anticipation of 6-axle MLW's coming down the D&H, since the D&H's Alco power had dwindled to pretty much nothing during the Guilford era. On one of the first weekends of operation on the D&H, three M636s are parked on the head end of a freight train waiting for a crew to head south.
Amtrak #154 at Peekskill, NY with a Schenectady-NYC run in the fall of 1986
Turboliner #155 at Peekskill. While the earlier, pug-faced, French-built Turboliners were operated in a couple different locations in the midwest, the later Rohr-built machines operated exclusively in New York on Empire Service and Adirondack duty.
Amtrak #163 exiting the famed Breakneck Ridge Tunnel at Cold Springs, NY
Turboliner #156 at Garrison, NY
Amtrak #2131, the sole RTL-II, at New York Penn Station in 2002. In 1995, Amtrak undertook an overhaul and upgrade program on a single RTL-I (Rohr Turboliner). The two power cars were sent to MK Rail (previously Morrison-Knudsen) where they were overhauled and had the two 1140hp turbines replaced with two 1600hp turbines. Amtrak overhauled the coaches and renovated the interiors at their own Beech Grove facilities. The whole machine, now referred to as an RTL-II, was painted in a new unique paint scheme and was renumbered to #2131, to avoid numbering conflicts with the GE Genesises that were arriving on the property. No more RTL-Is were converted into RTL-IIs, because MK Rail went bankrupt in 1996, as a result of CEO William Agee investing the company heavily into risky, non-core ventures (the same guy tanked Bendix Corporation when he tried an ill-advised takeover of Martin Marietta.) By the time of this photo, the #2131 was among the last of the operating Turboliners, with the rest having been marshalled to SuperSteel Schenectady for conversion to RTL-IIIs, and it was eventually the last one to operate before being scrapped.
RTL-II #2131 at Crugers, NY, passing a Metro North commuter run.
The first of the overhauled RTL-IIIs, #2150, with the third and final RTL-III, #2158, in the background at the Amtrak shops in Rensselaer. The #2158 never saw operation, and apparently has never had the plastic covers removed from the seats. The whole plan of NY funding the overhaul of the RTL-I/IIs and upgrading of the track was not a bad plan, but selection of SuperSteel Schenectady was where things went wrong. There are some allegations of croneyism resulting in the selection of SuperSteel Schenectady as the rebuilder. Among the issues with the RTL-IIIs were, no documentation including schematics, no manuals for shop use, unauthorized removal of two HVAC ducts which reduced heating and AC by nearly 45%, and use of unauthorized materials. When the first unit started having issues, almost immediately, Amtrak shop forces had no clue how anything was wired or plumbed, and nobody at SuperSteel Schenectady could provide them with any sort of help. There were also some oddities with general ergonomics (bus-style seats, cafe car was smaller, "Business Class" had same seating as coaches but still cost a premium) and bizarre gremlins (three toilets flushing simultaneouly would trip the brakes, forcing crews to lock out some of the bathrooms). Amtrak took the first one and put it into service but sternly warned SuperSteel Schenectady that they had to shape up. The second unit was no better, and when the third showed up with the same quality as the first two, Amtrak knocked all three out of service and shipped the down to Bear, DE to put them in storage. NY screamed bloody murder and accused Amtrak of "stealing" the RTL-IIIs that they had paid for, resulting in a lawsuit to pay SuperSteel for the incompleted units. The three RTL-IIIs have been in storage for 20 years now, while the unrebuilt RTL-I/IIs were scrapped a decade ago.
The two RTL-IIIs in storage at Adams Yard in Brunswick, NJ. From the stars of the Empire Service fleet to twenty years rotting away with few miles on them.
The sole RTL-II rotting away behind the former SuperSteel Schenectady plant in 2011. SuperSteel pulled up stakes in 2009 and left the state after sucking down hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and berkeleying up pretty much everything they touched.
https://dailygazette.com/2008/12/14/1214_Supersteel/
One of the original 1973-vintage French-built Turboliners in service on the Milwaukee Road, running on the Chicago-Milwaukee Hiawatha Corridor. This photo was taken during April of 1981, the final year that the RTGs, abbreviated from the French Rame à Turbine à Gaz, or gas turbine trains, were in service. Amtrak was also running them in Chicago-St. Louis and Chicago-Detroit services at the same time. They had constructed a special maintenance facility at Brighton Park, on the grounds of an old GM&O passenger coach yard to handle the unique maintenance demands of the RTGs. This specialized, and correspondingly expensive, maintenance was one of the causes that the RTGs were withdrawn from operation in 1981, as well as a spike in fuel prices after the Yom Kippur War. There was also the inflexibility of the RTG's configurations. After one year of operation, ridership on the Detroit-Chicago corridor had increased by 72 percent but, with a fixed capacity of 292 passengers on an trainset, Amtrak could not add capacity when demand outstripped supply, and there were only six trainsets spread across multiple routes so they couldn't just add another run. When they were just 2 years old, Amtrak had bumped them off Chicago-St. Louis service in favor of conventional locomotives with Amfleets, and just a year later, they replaced one of the Chicago-Detroit runs with a conventional locomotive and coaches as well. Before they were even 10 years old, the six sets were stored at Beech Grove and had mechanical components scavenged to use on the newer RTLs, which were built at Rohr under license from the original French manufacturer. Five of the sets were eventually scrapped, while one power car and a couple coaches sit derelict in a scrapyard in Indiana.
One of the Milwaukee Road's five FP45s and an FP7 with the combined Union Pacific City Of Denver/City Of Portland at Bensenville, Illinois on December 3rd, 1971. The Milwaukee Road ordered ten FP45s to replace their fleet of aging E- and F-Units, but then, as it became clear that passenger service was going to be handed over to the federal government, they canceled five units from the order (Illinois Central also had ten FP45s on order, and canceled the entire order for the same reasons). Milwaukee Road had been Union Pacific's line into Chicago since 1955 and had adopted the UP Armour Yellow and grey for their passenger equipment as well, both to make the consists more homogenized and because it was cheaper and easier to paint. According to Milwaukee Road vets, it quickly became standard procedure to put the FP45s in trailing positions behind F- or E-units because the FP45s rode much worse. In the lead-up to Amtrak, Milwaukee Road, like many other railroads, began yanking their newest power out of passenger service and shuffling it over to freight service, so that it wouldn't get bought up by Amtrak. The five FP45s lost their steam generators and were repainted into Milwaukee Road's orange and black and then put in freight service. Because they lacked dynamic brakes, and the V20 645s were problem childs and fuel hogs, the FP45s were never well-liked and were put in storage in the mid-'70s, then cannibalized to keep EMD 40-series units running, before all being scrapped in 1981.
A very rare photo of two of Union Pacific's SDP35s on the head-end of the sad remnant of the Overland, Train #27, which traced its heritage back to 1887 and the Omaha-San Francisco Overland Flyer and later to the luxurious extra-fare Overland Limited. Eventually downgraded and relegated to summer-only service, by 1965 Train #27 survived as an express and mail train with a rider coach occupied only by the occasional railfan or railroader on a pass. In two years, the railroads would unexpectedly lose their mail contract, that would spell the end of #27 and many other passenger trains in the US.
The SDP35 came about as a request from Seaboard Air Line. SAL had a number of aging E3s and E6s that it wanted to replace but didn't want to order new power that was strictly designed for passenger service with the possibility of discontinuing passenger service looming on the horizon. EMD took their 2500hp, 6-axle SD35 and squared off the end of the long hood and crammed a steam generator in there, and then regeared it with higher speed gears. SAL bough twenty of them, and Union Pacific went in for ten of their own (the only other sales were four for Louisville & Nashville and a single unit for Atlantic Coast Line). Union Pacific's were interesting in that, while they had the standard pilot-mounted M.U. cable receptacle on the front, they had a pilot-mounted receptacle and a high-mounted receptacle on the rear. The high-mounted hookup was for when it was paired with E-units, since those had their front M.U. hookups level with the headlight in the nose.
While Seaboard ran their SDP35s in passenger service and on hotshot piggyback trains, Union Pacific was ultimately never very happy with their SDP35s. Part of that was due to the fact that the SD/SDP35s used the same horrible electrical system as the maligned GP35s, with the sixteen-step transition process. Early on they would sometimes show up on secondary trains sandwich between a pair of E9As, or they would get assigned to local runs or mail trains, but when the loss of the mail contracts caused mass passenger train cancellations, it shook loose enough E-units that the SDP35s were permanently put into freight service. They all were placed in storage during the 1980 recession and stayed there until retirement in 1985. The #1409 was the last SDP35 operating on UP; removed from storage at Yermo, California, in June 1983 to protect Amtrak's California Zephyr operation across Wyoming.
Also interesting is the lead baggage car, which is one of the old horse cars. A number of railroads had special cars for transporting race or show horses or animals that required better treatment than your average livestock. They looked like a regular heavyweight baggage car but had three doors with windows in between the doors. Later in life, after their primary use became anachronistic, they were converted to baggage cars.
A far cry from the "Road Of The Streamliners" emblazoned on the cab sides. The engineer tosses a friendly wave as steam generator-equipped GP9 #198 leads an honest-to-God mixed train through Archer, Wyoming on September 2nd, 1957
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The City Of Los Angeles arrives at Los Angeles Union Passenger Terminal behind a grungy A-B-B-A set of E9s just a month or two before the formation of Amtrak.
The City Of Los Angeles has just arrived at Los Angeles behind filty E9s, while the San Diegan is preparing to depart behind spic and span F7s
Four Union Pacific E9s race eastbound through San Bernadino with the eastbound City Of Los Angeles, which had been combined with the Challenger in 1956 and the City Of San Francisco in 1960. Along the way to Chicago, the CoLA would also join up with the City of Denver, the City of Portland and the City Of Kansas City at various points, to form a massive consist nicknamed the City Of Everywhere. It often had up to eight E-units for power and as many as 27 passenger cars behind it.
Union Pacific #430, a 1901 Burnham, Williams & Co. (became Baldwin in 1909) product, at the Cedar Rapids, Nebraska on October 5th, 1957, with a mixed train. Looks like some lucky farmers are getting some new Farm-All tractors. A late date for such an old teakettle of a Consolidation to still be out and about. While the #430 was retired and scrapped, sister engine UP #428 is at Illinois Railway Museum and undergoing a (slow) return to operation.
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