Atlantic Coast Line E7 #535 at Jacksonville, FL in 1960. You can see the mechanical speed recorder cable and the inductive shoe for the Automatic Train Stop on the front truck.
Atlantic Coast Line E7 #535 at Jacksonville, FL in 1960. You can see the mechanical speed recorder cable and the inductive shoe for the Automatic Train Stop on the front truck.
An A-B set of Atlantic Coast Line E7s with the Norfolk & Western Pocahontas at Blue Ridge, VA on November 06, 1958. In the late 1950s, N&W had said they predicted to be operating steam locomotives at least until 1969. Within a year though, they began buying and leasing diesel power and parking their steam locomotives. A major part of that was that N&W quickly discovered that when stokers and feedwater heaters and valve gear failed, they could no longer get parts for them, with the manufacturers having either gone out of business or pivoted to other fields. N&W placed an order for steam generator-equipped GP9s in Tuscan Red, but EMD was backed up with orders for GP9s at the moment, and so N&W scrambled and leased E7s from Atlantic Coast Line and E8s from Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac to handle major passenger trains until the "Redbird" GP9s could arrive. While they retained their original numbers and livery, N&W did apply Norfolk & Western lettering to the sides.
ACL E7s with the New York–Miami East Coast Champion at the stunning Broad Street Station in Richmond, VA, in August 1957.
ACL E6 #520, assigned to the Washington–Jacksonville Everglades, gets it's windshield cleaned at Florence, SC in August 1957.
One of those handsome R-1 class Northerns races out of Richmond with the Florida Special, a premium winter-season-only train aimed at the vacationing snowbirds from the northeast that was competitor to SAL's Orange Blossom Special. Ironically, while the Orange Blossom Special is more widely remembered, the Florida Special lasted longer and received an all-streamlined consist. It left New York City on the Pennsylvania Railroad, then transferred over to the Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac at Washington DC, then was handed over to the ACL at Richmond, and then Florida East Coast handled it from Jacksonville to Miami, with optional steamship service from Miami to Havana, Cuba. There were more stops on the FEC's Jacksonville-Miami leg of the trip than the entire rest of the way, and I recall reading where someone said that on one of the joint passenger trains where FEC operated the final leg into Miami, that portion took all day, with stops every few miles.
ACL R-1 #1807 on a freight train near Richmond, VA. Intended for passenger service, their balancing issues and the subsequent order of EMC E3s meant the R-1s found themselves in freight service fairly early on.
E6s passing under the telltales at Richmond with the southbound Everglades.
P5 Pacific #1524 headed towards Atlanta with the Dixie Flagler
One of ACL's big Vanderbilt-tendered 2-10-2s hammers up the steep grade south of Montgomery, Alabama, with a long southbound freight train in November 1941. The ACL ended up selling some of their 2-10-2s to the Chicago & Illinois Midland, where they lost their tenders in favor of more conventional tenders off of retired New York Central L-1 Mohawks. The C&IM also had 2-10-2s of their own design, as well as ex-Wabash 2-10-2s.
Atlantic Coast Line was a bit unusual in that they preferred to routinely assign their Pacifics in light freight service. A pair of their 69" drivered Pacifics haul a perishable train.
An ACL P-5 Pacific with a trainload of cypress stumps in Florida.
The leased ACL E7s at an angle where you can see the Norfolk & Western lettering that was applied during their time at N&W.
The Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac E8s that were leased by N&W drifting down the Blue Ridge Grade with the Powhatan Arrow
Famed Norfolk & Western Class A 2-6-6-4 #1218 is climbing the Blue Ridge Grade, while a leased RF&P E8 with the Powhatan Arrow is descending on the other track.
Dapper dark blue, white and gray RF&P E-units and a C&O Geep congregate at Potomac Yard in Alexandria. Potomac Yard, often shortened to Pot Yard, was once one of the busiest on the east coast. From the south, it was not uncommon to see power from Southern, C&O (via trackage rights on the SOU), RF&P (which was handed off all traffic from SAL & ACL, receiving it at Richmond), at Pot Yard. From the north, B&O handled just as much traffic into Pot Yard as PRR, which, got their own wires through the southbound receiving hump and reverse to the power rack to run their electric motors. Also wired was a running track and two relay tracks to the north, the north ends of the northbound departure tracks, and the running tracks to the main at RO.
One of the N&W's steam generator-equipped Geeps in the Tuscan red with black frame and yellow striping and lettering, which replaced the Class J 4-8-4s and various Class K 4-8-2s, as well as allowing N&W to return the borrowed RF&P and ACL covered wagons. The Tuscan red livery resulted in the nickname "Redbirds" and almost had a PRR look to them (PRR did own Geeps with steam generators but didn't paint any in Tuscan red). The N&W's passenger GP9s are like no other GP9, in that instead of having the air reservoirs running perpendicular to frame like most GP7/9/18's, the fuel/water tank looked like the tank and air reservoir found on the GP20. The sill of the locomotive had the same five slots as a GP20.
The N&W passenger Geeps after a later repaint into Pevler Blue with the yellow "hamburger" logo.
Another N&W passenger Geep in Pevler Blue with the City of Decatur, the remnants of the Wabash's Blue Bird. Four years after N&W engulfed the Wabash, they trimmed the Blue Bird back from St. Louis to Decatur and renamed it, only for it to die 3 years later when Amtrak elected not to continue the service.
N&W #510, still holding down ex-Wabash commuter runs in August of 1971, having handled the final Cannonball just four months earlier. You can see how N&W even repainted the passenger cars into the Pevler blue and yellow. For those living in the area, other than the lettering, little had changed in terms off appearance. Herman Pevler had been in charge over at the Wasbash, prior to the 1964 merger, and had dumped the more complex light blue, dark blue, grey and white livery in favor of a solid medium blue dip with yellow lettering, all while slashing Wabash passenger service just as fast as the ICC would allow. Once the takeover of the Wasbash was completed, Stuart Saunders, N&W president, was moved to the PRR to help facilitate the Penn Central merger, while Pevler was given the keys to the N&W. Pevler continued what he had done over at Wabash, even changing the N&W Tuscan red and yellow to the same solid blue, and continued trimming down as much as he could. In retrospect, Pevler probably should have gone to PRR instead, as he would have gotten it into better shape in the lead-up to PC, and he likely would have gotten along much better with NYC's Alfred Perlmann. Indeed, everyone expected Pevler to be moved over to PRR, due to seniority, and was shocked when Saunders got the nod instead. The deciding factor was that Saunders had just pulled off the N&W/Wabash/Nickel Plate/Pittsburgh & West Virginia merger, and had acquired the Virginian five years earlier, and everyone at PRR viewed him as the go-to guy for merger proceedings.
L&N E6A #775 and an E7A race out of Cincinnati Union Terminal with the Southland, which ran from Chicago to St. Petersburg, Florida. PRR handled it from Chicago to Cincinnati, the Ol' Reliable took over from Cincinnati to Atlanta, then Central of Georgia moved it from Atlanta to Albany, Georgia, then ACL took over from Albany to Thomasville, GA and then on to it's final destination. There were also a connecting service to Detroit that was handled by the Wabash, and later the B&O, as well as a N&W connection from Cincinnati to Roanoke, and FEC connections to various destinations in Florida. The Southland was unique in that it was the only Chicago-Florida train that ran year round, as well as the fact that it bypassed Jacksonville. Back under the concourse is train 99, the southbound Pan-American to New Orleans, which will likely be next out, and an NYC train stands to the far right.
A veteran E6A and a brand-new E8A roll past Junta Tower at Cartersville, Georgia with the Southland. The fireman has come over to the right side of the locomotive to grab any orders on the fly, if needed.
Another L&N E6/E7 combo, this time with an E7 in the lead. The scene is L&N’s old Canal Street station in New Orleans, and the train is number 6, the northbound Humming Bird to Cincinnati. This post-WWII streamliner was one of two constructed by ACF for the L&N and the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis subsidiary and inaugurated in 1946. Tthe other train was the St. Louis-Atlanta Georgian, which was later shifted to a Chicago-Atlanta routing. While this 1951 image speaks of the optimism of railroad passenger service of that time, in truth, roads like the L&N were already coming to grips with the hemorrhage of patronage to other modes. The Humming Bird, however, would continue to fly until 1969, when it was finally discontinued, and many of the ACF lightweight cars were scrapped around the same time, due to internal corrosion problems that had been hidden by the stainless-steel skins, which I've heard referred to as "Budd Syndrome".
An L&N crew installs the white flags on RS-3 #242, which is paired up with #243, to haul a series of specials that the L&N ran each March for Louisville-area elementary school students. After a two hour, 60-mile round trip, the students will return to Louisville Union Station and their waiting school buses. These specials usually rated 17 to 18 coaches, plus a stripped-down diner. Worth noting is that the first car is an NC&StL coach, still in green and lettered for the “Dixie Line", despite the NC&StL vanishing two years earlier.
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