THE 80'S, PT1

The year is 1980, and newly delivered GP50 4817 sits in Hillsdale Yard with a retired wreck train. The crane and most of its accompanying cars are headed for scrap.

4817 shows off the Appalachian Railroad's final paint scheme; brown with a gold-trimmed black stripe. The unit itself is not in its intended service; it was purchased for fast intermodal trains. Today, however, it will pull the wreck train to Uniontown for its final disposition. As for the APRR itself, it,too, will soon be gone, as merger talks are in progress. In six years, the APRR will become the AP&WRR.

The retired crane sits with its boom car and tender. Like many of its brethren, it was steam powered to the end. At least the railroad kept it well-maintained.

A retired baggage car serves as a tool car. It will be the only car saved today, but it will still meet the scrapper's torch by the end of the decade. Note the wooden kitchen car. Rebuilt from a boxcar, it is even older than the 1940-built crane!

Another pair of wooden ex-boxcars, this time rebuilt into bunk cars. A relic of the time when wreck crews stayed on site overnight, as well as when MOW crews did trackwork, they, along with the crane and kitchen car, are surplus. Today, wrecks are cleaned up by contractors, and track crews stay in local hotels overnight -much better accommodations!

PASSING TRAINS PT53(3)

A final look at NP71...

Among the covered hoppers are a pair of specially painted cars in support of Feeding America. Here is one of them.

And here is the other one. Both cars are leased by ConAgra; the difference in the two schemes is in the corporate logo on the left end of the cars, which are leased from GATX.

An EEC (East Erie Commercial) boxcar. Note the rusty roof! There are also rust streaks under the door tracks as well. (But no graffiti?!?!)

A BKTY car, leased from GATX. The Union Pacific uses the BKTY reporting marks for its leased boxcars; they were inherited when the UP acquired the MKT railroad in 1988.

A string of empty bulkhead flatcars, including a pair of centerbeam flats.

More empty bulkhead flats, all on the tail end of the train.

The EOT flashes on the end of an APW flatcar -and the end of the train,

PASSING TRAINS PT53(2)

More of train NP71 from last week...

A short tank car, followed by a TTX-acquired 60' high-cube boxcar, and a pair of conventional 50' boxcars.

A single crude oil tank car, another two-bay covered hopper, and a pair of conventionally-painted RailBox cars.

The hopper is an empty cement car owned by Blue Circle Cement.

The first boxcar has recently been re-painted in the new "TTX" scheme, while the second car still has the old "TTX" logo. Both are loaded with scrap paper for recycling.

An empty centerbeam bulkhead flatcar leads a string of empty molten sulfur tank cars.

A big ex-Golden West Service boxcar and a carbon black hopper are both on the way back west for re-loading.
A final look next week...