Diesel Power for long consists, BOS-NH

During the '60's I saw many a Boston-Washington train pass through Newark Penn Station. During some of the holidays 171, 172, 174 and 175 occasionally had 10-15 cars between Boston and New Haven. I also recall seeing a Merchants Limited leaving GCT on the Sunday after Thanksgiving in 1966 with 16 cars.
My question - by 1964 were the PA's still hauling passenger trains? Would they have used maybe 2-3 PA's of 3 FL9's to pull a train of this length? Would they have added an RS-3 or GP-9 to supplement the cab units if they had a long train?

Thanks!

Andy

I have the official mileage records for locomotives for the period in question but I can't pull them right now. I don't think any PA's still had working steam generators for passenger service by 1964. In the event of an extremely heavy train they could use three FL-9's as long as the middle one was one of the first 30 locomotives as the second 30 did not come with MU on the nose. They could also use two or three GP-9's but this wasn't at all common as most of them in passenger service were used on commuter trains in Boston and one pair on the Springfield Line. They only had two RS-3's with working steam on them so this was probably not going to happen but they could have added a GP-9 to a pair of FL-9's.
Noel Weaver

I can tell you that during one holiday period in the late 60's, I was on a Merchants Limted to Boston with 16 cars, and the last couple of cars didn't platform at South Station. 3 Fl-9s pulled it.

#171 in the 60s commonly had 3 FL9s onSunday due to extra heavy consist. i saw this several times and am told it was often done

There's a pic a few years back in Classic Trains that I can't forget - a long second-tier passenger train quite heavy with mail/express. It had three RS11's on the point. Very cool.

Back in the early 50s (before my train watching time but i have seen photos of them) two DL-109s were fitted with nose MU for use as a middle unit between two PAs. One of those also had a major nose modification to allow walking between units