PENN CENTRAL
This short lived ill fated road was the result of the merger of the New York Central and the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1968. Shortly thereafter, the New Haven was basically forced into the company. Not allowed to abandon many redundant lines due to a slow federal government bureaucracy, the railroad struggled for the mere eight years of its existence. Having numerous money losing passenger operations did not help. Today's transit agencies such as Metro North and NJ Transit were unheard of in the 1970's. Makes you wonder if things had been just a little bit different?
With such a vast system, this PC home page will have numerous sections and will take some time to develop. With GG-1's on freights, Alco and Baldwin switchers, Horseshoe Curve, the beautiful Hudson River valley, F-units on coal trains in Cleveland ( including a cab ride! ), this will be a very diverse page indeed. I will add some early Conrail pictures here also.
NY to Trenton Meadows yard Princeton Jct. page Trenton to Philadelphia The Bel-Del division Pavonia, Camden, NJ
Philly-Washington Enola Yard Horseshoe Curve West Shore line to Selkirk Collinwood Terminal
A RS-11 on a caboose hop going through Newark, NJ, Penn Station in 1974.
Remember Amtrak didn't own the Northeast Corridor until the mid-1980's. PC
did operate low profile container trains through New York Penn Station.
You can see some of them on the Princeton Junction
page. Penn Central
concentrated their smaller Alco's in the New Jersey area, while the larger units
were in the Cleveland, Ohio and Mingo Jct., West Virginia area. The Baldwins
remained near their birthplace in southeast Pennsylvania. You will see
them on the Pavonia yard
page. The Fairbanks-Morse units were
in the Chicago area. Of course, EMD and GE units units roamed system wide.
For more PC stuff, visit Jerry Jordak's great site, or the PC Historical Society pages
For the lack of anywhere else to put this, this is a former New Haven flanger at
Maybrook, NY in 1973.