New York Central freight cars survive after 1968?

I realize this topic may already have been covered in another forum, but nonetheless, how long did the New York Central freight cars last after the New York Central was bought out by Penn Central in 1968? Did any of them run into the Penn Central era or were they all immediately painted with the Penn Central scheme, or scrapped altogether?

Paint took a long time. In some cases cars still said NYC, sometimes the initials were changed to PC but the rest of the car kept its lettering. Many cars originally built for NYC survived into Conrail.

Just for fun, I pulled out my copy of the October 1986 Official Railway Equipment Register.

Under the Conrail listing, there were still more than a page of listings for NYC-lettered rolling stock. Most of these were one's and two's, but I think it still added up to a few hundred cars. Too lazy to do all that addition though

The largest remaining series was 99 cars in the group 506000 to 506199. These were 53 foot flat cars.

RF1988:

New York Central and the Pennsylvania Railroad MERGED in 1968 forming the Penn Central Transportation
Company which was the full name of the new railroad - As many know PC went bankrupt in the early 1970s
and was a basic part of what became Conrail in 1976...

With the precarious financial position PC was in as has been mentioned some NYC and PRR liveried equipment
lasted into the Conrail era and over time as equipment ages they are retired and replaced...

What I also found interesting is how when Conrail was split up by NS and CSX in the late 90s they used the old
reporting marks NYC for equipment conveyed to CSX and PRR for equipment conveyed to NS...

Equipment in original NYC and PRR color schemes would be a minimum of 46 years old today and those few
that are still around belong to historical associations, railroads or museums primarily...

MACTRAXX

I took this photo in 1985.
this NYC car (NYC subsidiary Peoria and Eastern) had been running 17 years un-patched for PC or Conrail:



Scot

A few final questions; First, does anyone remember the New York Central boxcars that said "Pacemaker Services" on them, and were they among the New York Central freight cars which lasted into the Penn Central era? Also, and I realize this may be slightly off-topic, but did Penn Central keep around a lot of the Pennsylvania Railroad freight cars as well?

railfan1988 wrote: Also, and I realize this may be slightly off-topic, but did Penn Central keep around a lot of the Pennsylvania Railroad freight cars as well?

Early on, Penn Central kept virtually *everything* from the PRR and the NYC..locomotives, freight cars, cabooses, everything.
Rolling stock and locomotives were gradually, slowly, replaced over time, but the only meaningful thing that changed in 1968 was the name of the railroad,
and two railroads becoming one..equipment did not change at all in an immediate sense.

same with Conrail in '76.

just because a new railroad is formed from a merger, doesn't mean all-new equipment arrives instantly!
it never does..

and in the 1960's and 70's mass-mergers, (Erie Lackawanna, Penn Central, Conrail, and many others)
the railroads were in such poor financial shape that they couldn't afford to buy new equipment immediately.
new locomotives and cars were phased in, and old ones phased out, slowly and gradually over time.

Penn Central of 1968 was pretty much 100% old NYC and PRR locos and equipment.
in 1970 they might have been 80% old and 20% new.
in 1972 70% old and 30% new.
by 1976, perhaps 50/50..
those percentages are just made up, and are just rough guesses, but you get the idea..

Scot

railfan1988 wrote:A few final questions; First, does anyone remember the New York Central boxcars that said "Pacemaker Services" on them, and were they among the New York Central freight cars which lasted into the Penn Central era? Also, and I realize this may be slightly off-topic, but did Penn Central keep around a lot of the Pennsylvania Railroad freight cars as well?

Railfan - I'm not sure if your first question is about the boxcars or the paint scheme. If it's the boxcars themselves, it's a safe bet that most of them survived into PC. The Central discontinued Pacemaker freight service in the 1950's and started repainting the red-over-gray boxcars into boxcar red (and maybe eventually jade green). That's not to say that some didn't survive in Pacemaker paint into the PC era but I'd think that would be a rare sight. This goes for cabooses and any other equipment that had the Pacemaker paint scheme applied.

Assuming the date is correct, here's a photo from George Elwood's Fallen Flag site. The photo is dated 1967. From the condition of the paint, that could be right.

http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/nyc/nyc175608ajs.jpg" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

And here's another string on rr.net about Pacemaker boxcars for more info on the topic: http://www.railroad.net/forums/viewtopi ... 93&t=53316" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Bill