Questionable F7A's on roster

I am doing some research and trying to determine if any of the following road #'s actually existed for Conrail. Most rosters show these #'s as existing but I have never seen a photo of any of these units. I would consider that if the unit had a small "CR" stencil" and was "ever" in service that it truly existed for Conrail.

I would appreciate any help.
1651 1659 1672 1681 1684 1686 1687 1696 1697 1709 1731 1747 1749 1762 1796 1839 1841 1880
1882 1883 1885 1886 1887 1889 1890 1892 1894
Thanks

park

I would guess these units actually existed, but only received conrail numbers "on paper"..and were probably sidelined on 4/1/76 and never physically received their CR numbers or actually operated with CR..

Conrail probably inherited a lot more F-units than they operated.

which puts these units in an odd twilight zone as far as the Conrail roster is concerned..
because technically they were on the roster..but they were never "real" Conrail engines in the sense that they never actually turned a wheel for the company.

Scot

I can only add this, Conrail was not overloaded with decent power at the
start up. If any of these engines were operable and able to run, they
were probably used for at least a while or maybe until the first failure.
Noel Weaver

I shot two of them (1709, 1747) on the Collinwood deadline in 1977, they didn't look like they served recently.
http://trainspot.rrpicturearchives.net/ ... ?id=737948

http://trainspot.rrpicturearchives.net/ ... x?id=64604

Conrail was getting units out of storage if they'd run and using them - ABBA EL F7's, for example. But they may not have lasted long enough to get actually renumbered.

according to many of the books published on Conrail they gained nearly 5,000 locomotives at start up with most of them haveing problums. My best bet would be that some units in particular ones that were in real bad shape and side lined by there former owners before Conrail was formed. They may have been given CR numbers by someone in upper managment with little thought to see or ask if they were junk. These unts could have also been striped of what there was of any good parts long enough to keep what was on the road running till newer locomotives started to arrive.

scharnhorst wrote:according to many of the books published on Conrail they gained nearly 5,000 locomotives at start up with most of them haveing problums. My best bet would be that some units in particular ones that were in real bad shape and side lined by there former owners before Conrail was formed. They may have been given CR numbers by someone in upper managment with little thought to see or ask if they were junk. These unts could have also been striped of what there was of any good parts long enough to keep what was on the road running till newer locomotives started to arrive.

thats basically what we all said..a year and a half ago..

Scot

My guess would be that PC and CR were a bankruptcey and a reorgiazation.They most likley had to take several inventories.To prove in court that all the assets (locomotives,rolling stock,tools,supplies,real property,)were in truth worth less than their debt.then in the reorginazition the banks that gave the government backed loans,and the government would need to know the value of the assets that Conrail would be left with subtracted from the amount of the loan would equal the amount of money the government would be liable for.The locomotives even if unserviceable would have some value.Any hiding or neglegence in counting would have delayed or de-railed the process.

Conrail ran anything that would run, but the writing was on the wall for the oldest junkers and a lot of them got used without ever being renumbered. They replaced the PR-SL's remaining Baldwins right off the bat with EL RS2/3s that the EL had been storing in Marion, most of which were in rough shape. Some of them only lasted a few weeks before catastrophic failure and were retired unrenumbered. Some units lasted longer than they thought they would, but never got renumbered either.

I have an early Railfan magazine noting they got EL F7 ABBA sets out of storage and ran the Bloomsburg line with them, too.

But whenever the count was made Conrail allocated numbers for those units, numbers were even allocated for the various engines and cars that went to the D&H (LV C420s, GP38-2s, RDG GP39-2s). It's very possible some of those units were already dead and remained on the roster to let the new company deal with disposal rather than the Penn Central (or any of the others) company sort it out. Perhaps they felt they'd get a better price selling them to the government, too.

Yes and after the court judge was involved the trustee most likley could not dispose of anything without approval of the judge.So the locomotives in storage sat,till released.Then I would imagine the Chief Mechanical Officer would pay a visit to the Chief Finanical Officer and say,Sir you know the size of my departments budget,We are holding things together with baleing wire and duct tape.Those motors in storage have parts that we need to keep the serviceable fleet in ready status.Some of the units have parts we can not buy at any price ,they have not been stocked in 20 years.All of this is guessing ,but I would bet it took place and left many units rostered a few years that never turned a wheel in Conrail.

it would not suprise me if many of the selvaged parts flooded the market shortley after they were sold to the scraping operations.