NS Adorns Loco for Cleveland NMRA Convention

This past Thursday I traveled along with fellow Akron Railroad Club member Jerry Krueger along with Jeff Mitchell and Chuck Klein to the Altoona, Pa., locomotive works.

The reason for the trip was to photograph a new locomotive that Norfolk Southern had painted for the upcoming National Model Railroading Association national convention being held in Cleveland this year.

No. 3215, an SD40-2 with a new admiral cab, was adorned with the official logo for the convention.

These cabs are so called because of the way that the glass angles outward much like a ship. They are needed because the original cabs the locomotives were delivered with have worn out.

The old cabs weighed about 3,800 pounds, but the new cabs weigh over 14,000 pounds.  This is because they are made with1-inch thick steel as opposed to ¼-inch steel of the old cab.

Our group was escorted by paint shop manager Scott Giles. He and his employees were very proud of the work they had done, as they they should be.

The new locomotive was on display outside and Scott had even told his employees to walk on the north side of the engine so as not to disturb the snow for our pictures.  Such was the attention to detail of the NS shop forces.

Besides photographing the new engine we were able to get pictures of three of the four executive F-units (the fourth was being worked on).

That’s Jerry and Chuck posing on the engine in a photo below and Jerry admiring it in another. Jerry was the mover and shaker without whom this project would not have happened.  I was fortunate to be invited along to share these photos with the club.

Also parked outside was the Norfolk & Western heritage locomotive (No. 8103), which had been damaged last week. I didn’t get a very good picture of it as it was parked behind a gondola.

Article and Photographs by Todd Dillon

Tags: National Model Railroad Association, NMRA, Norfolk Southern, NS motive power