GOLDEN-ARM wrote:You must have refelctive striping on the sides and ends of the loco. It's the law. Also, you might want to pool some oil on the catwalks, add liberal amounts of rust and grime, and have parts falling off the loco too........ hehehe
Sorry GOLDEN-ARM, but those days on Penn Central are a thing of the past!
The US government, afraid of creating a "socialist" railroad (CR), decided to give the cash that would have been for Conrail to Penn Central, Reading, and the Delaware & Hudson. The CNJ, LHR, EL, and Ann Arbor were chopped up and sold to a variety of railroads. (Chessie, N&W, B&M, D&H). Penn Central was allowed to aggressively tear up branches, redundant main lines, and merge its subsidiaries into itself. To retire the debt it had incurred over the years, all the torn up lines were sold as scrap, along with older equipment. Penn Central began to upgrade its fleet to include SD40-2's,GP38-2's,GP40-2's,C30-7's,C36-7's,B23-7's, and SD50's by the early 1980's. Bi-Directional running was also introduced. Trains going Eastbound from Chicago to New York(for Example) were routed on an all NYC route. But trains going Westbound used an LV-NYC-Canada Southern-NYC routing. The water level route east of Rochester was primarily used for eastbound traffic, with all westbound traffic being routed on the LV to Rochester, where it would be diverted onto the water level route. (Penn Central poured millions into making sure that it wouldn't have congestion problems like it had in the past!) By the mid 1980's, after ten years of hard work, and the selling off of its nonrail assets, Penn Central was a lean and profitable railroad. Finally, it could live up to the promises of 20 years ago and make money. Penn Central and Norfolk Southern began to use roadrailers for long haul runs, and convinced shippers to change from regular trailers to roadrailers. Penn Central even developed a special chassis to convert ordinary trailers to roadrailers. But doublestacks would be what really took off on Penn Central. Where the flexivans once rolled, mile long stack trains snaked along. Horseshoe Curve had become such a bottleneck by the mid 1990's that studies were done to see if installation of a fourth track was necessary!