Waiting the Scrapper’s Torch in East Altoona

Every once in a while, I’ll find some glassine envelopes containing treasures from a long ago trip. The first part of one such envelope contains photos of the Penn Central scrap line in East Altoona, Pennsylvania, in 1969 or 1970.

We see former Pennsylvania Railroad 6810 (6810 is its PC number), formerly PRR 8610, an Alco RSD-7. We also see New York Central Alco S4 No. 9760. On the far right is my good friend John Woodworth taking down the roster numbers.

Behind the 9760 is PRR Fairbanks Morse Train Master No. 6707. A side shot is blocked by the next line of locomotives.

Other images include PRR 6708, an FM H24-66 Train Master. NYC 8305, an FM H12-44, and a second NYC FM switcher are sunning themselves. Soon these locomotives will feel the heat of the scrapper’s torch.

Finally, we see PRR 4216, an EMD E7A, and PRR 7949 (PC number), which I believe this is a Baldwin DS44-1000.

Photographs by Robert Farkas

The Dead Line in Brewster

It is (almost surely) 1967 or 1968 in the Norfolk & Western yard in Brewster where N&W No. 2542 (Alco RS3), Nickel Plate Road No. 35 (Alco S2), and N&W No. 2038 (Alco S2) sit in the dead line.

These locomotives aren’t coming back to life but live on in photographs and memories.

Photograph by Robert Farkas

Found in the Dead Line in Brewster

Locomotive dead lines are not museums per se, but they can be museum-like in that they are repositories, usually temporary, for old motive power.

Norfolk & Western 2141 was reposing in the dead line at Brewster, Ohio, on July 3, 1972, when Bob Farkas found it.

This Fairbanks-Morse H-12-44 was built in March 1957 as Nickel Plate Road 141. It would have acquired its N&W identity sometime after the N&W acquired the NKP in 1964.

The H-12-44 was a yard switcher with 1,200 horsepower and a B-B wheel arrangement. The Nickel Plate had 22 of the units.

Most of the 303 H-12-44 units built for American railroads were scrapped after their retirement.

Photograph by Robert Farkas

Railroading as it Once Was: Waiting in the Weeds in Scranton to be Rescued, Sold or Scrapped

An October 1976 trip to Scranton, Pennsylvania, yielded this photo of some stored former Erie Lackawanna F units.

Although the new Conrail was only a few months old, many former EL units had already been renumbered.

Unused junkers tucked away on some weed-infested siding didn’t rate the attention active units did, so here they sat still “untouched.”

Some of these units would get put back into service and renumbered into the Conrail system, but from what I can see the 7091 got shipped off to Altoona in ‘77 and never ran again.

She more than likely went to the scrapper proudly carrying the EL diamond on her nose.

Article and Photograph by Roger Durfee