Reading EMU cars all over at Reading Terminal in Philadelphia. That car to the left, combine EMU car #306, would eventually be rebuilt into a regular coach EMU car, and then would eventually be retired and bought by George Hart, who would strip the traction motors, cab controls, pantographs and transformers and use it as a coach for his Rail Tours Inc. That car is actually now owned by Reading & Northern, lettered for Lehigh Gorge Scenic and in very faded blue paint.
Reading "Blueliner" EMU #9115 with a two car train at Miquon on the Norristown branch of the Reading. August 10th, 1968.
Reading C424 #424 and two Lehigh & Hudson River RS-3s and a L&HR C420 at night at what I would guess is Allentown Yard.
Reading G-3 #217 with a "crosslines" train, stopping at the CNJ's Bethlehem, PA station.
Reading RDC #9161 with a two car train at Cheltenham on the Reading's Fox Chase Line of the Newtown Branch. Electrification ended at Fox Chase.
Reading T-1 #2128 passing under the 987-foot long bridge that carried the Lebanon Valley Branch over the Schuylkill River at Reading, PA. Those things hanging in the foreground were "telltales". If a brakeman was working on top of the cars and facing the other direction, the telltales would slap him across the head and shoulders to alert him to the approaching low clearance, giving him time to either drop down between the cars or lay flat on the car he was on.
Reading GP35s #3621 and #3643 at the Reading's Erie Avenue Engine Terminal in Philadelphia, PA on June 1, 1968. That's wreck train cars #90891 and #90797 and the big hook.
Reading RS-3 #495 and caboose #92928 switching two new Budd Metroliners, lettered for the already defunct PRR, at Wayne Junction, Philadelphia on June 15th, 1968. The PRR had ceased to exist four and a half months earlier when it was rolled into Penn Central, and yet the cars were delivered with PRR lettering, a result of the Metroliners' long-running, and problematic, development. The cars would be badged for Penn Central when finally put into service on January 16th, 1969.
Three major Reading paint schemes are present in this one shot taken at Spring Street in Reading, PA on July, 1975. GP40-2 #3673 wears the late solid green livery with yellow chevrons, SW900 #1515 is in the yellow and green two-ton, and SW900 #1501, shifting Budd Silverliner #9014, wears the solid Pullman green. I believe that's the Mount Penn fire tower visible in the background.
Advertising for the Reading Iron Horse Rambles in the Reading Terminal at Philadelphia on May 20th, 1962. "The Greatest Thrill In Railroading Today." Hmmm, much could be said of the Reading & Northern's modern day Iron Horse Rambles using one of the very same locomotives.
Former Reading 0-4-0 Camelback #1187, at the Colorado Fuel and Iron's E&G Brooke Plant in Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. Reading sold off the little switch engine in 1946 and there, the locomotive was reassigned to switch cars loaded with steel around the plant's yard as their #4. In 1962, #4 was purchased by the recently-revived Strasburg Rail Road to operate alongside their ex-CN 0-6-0 and was run to Leaman Place under it's own power, making it the only Strasburg Rail Road engine to arrive under steam. It's career on the Strasburg was pretty short-lived, since even with the much shorter train lengths of that era, the #1187/#4 was wildly underpowered. The crews complained that it was a pretty poor-steaming engine and also nicknamed it "the hobby horse" for it's poor ride quality and it was out of service by 1967, when Great Western of Colorado 2-10-0 #90 and PRR 4-4-0 #1223 arrived. The locomotive sat on display at the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania for decades, slowly decaying, until recently being purchased by Age of Steam Roundhouse and moved to Sugarcreek, Ohio for a cosmetic restoration. Kelly Anderson, now-retired Chief Mechanical Officer of Strasburg, noted that when the smokestack was removed for transport, he discovered a baffle welded inside of it that covered half the diameter of the stack. The #1187 was out of service by the time he started, so he never operated it or saw it operate, but he's pretty certain that that baffle, added at an unknown point in time, was likely the reason it steamed so poorly.
A Reading I10-sa Consolidation at Zehners with a coal train.
Reading Budd Silverliner #9016 and "Blueliner" EMU #9131 at Doylestown, PA, during a fan trip on July 1st, 1967.
An Alco publicity photo of freshly constructed and painted Reading Alco FA-1 #303 and others.
Reading FP7 #901 with the Wall Street at Brown Street, Philadelphia in October of 1960. Note Reading FP7 #907 on the far track as well.
An I9-sa Consolidation gets it's ash pans cleaned out at Tamaqua, PA
A Reading doodlebug under the train sheds at Reading Outer Station. The doodlebug appears to have a RPO section, a baggage compartment and a passenger compartment, and it appears to have a trailer (lightweight, shorter-length coach designed to be towed behind a motorcar) hooked to it.
An older I8-a Camelback 2-8-0 throws up a pretty impressive cloud of smoke as it hustles through Allentown with a short freight.
A big, unrebuilt Reading N1-sa 2-8-8-2 Mallet rests beneath the trainsheds at Reading Outer Station, likely waiting to couple on as a helper for a freight. Note the unique Hall disc, or banjo, signals to the right, which the Reading was quite fond of. The opening in the center had colored discs that moved up into position for the different signals, and there was a light inside for nighttime. In a time before electricity, these would be a high tech alternative to mechanically operated semaphores. This also explains why Banjo signals are so often associated with the Reading system. In the late 19th century the Reading was an extremely wealthy railroad and would be able to afford something like this. Difficulty seeing them as the colors on the discs faded and the advent of automatic block signalling, with the colored lights like are used today, resulted in Hall signals pretty much vanishing before 1950.
A big I10-sa Consolidation works a westbound coal train along the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company Canal at Allentown, PA.
An L7-sb Camelback 4-6-0 of unusual aesthetic appeal hauls westbound passenger train #195, with an RPO, a baggage car, and two coaches, under the signal bridge at Allentown, PA.
Semi-streamlined G2-sa Pacific #178 races out of Jersey City with the Crusader trainset.
Reading G1-sa Pacific #119 gets a Baltimore & Ohio passenger train, heavy with headend cars in the shape of B&O wagontop express boxcars, departs from the CNJ's Communipaw Terminal facilities in Jersey City. Yes, a Reading locomotive with a B&O train on CNJ rails, all part of the corporate conga line of ownership.
The Crusader, behind one of the two streamlined Pacifics, with what looks like a CNJ commuter run behind one of their chunky T-38 Camelback 4-6-0s on an adjacent track, departing from Jersey City.
A big N1-sa Mallet at Gordon, PA. Gordon was originally on a branch of the Mine Hill & Schuylkill Haven Railroad. The line came across the Broad Mountain, then down twin inclined-planes with cable & hoist systems. At Gordon, conventional motive power took over, and thus the engine terminal. After the Gordon Planes were abandoned, around 1899, Gordon was a helper engine facility, with pushers assisting trains both eastbound to Tamaqua, and westbound to Shamokin over the Locust Summit grade. The big N1-sas and their various later rebuilds, which were found to quickly run out of breath when run hard for extended periods of time and which were extremely slow, were frequently found at Gordon operating as pushers. Gordon was also a late last stand for the T-1s; after diesels had bumped them off the head ends of trains, a handful of them ran out their final days shoving coal drags over Locust Summit.
Judging by the women in dresses climbing up in the cab, and all the men standing around in their Sunday best on the left of the photo, I think this is some sort of railfan excursion or event.
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