Business Train Extra 517 - Sept. 8

GRS/PAR Business Train Extra 517 West out of Portland at 4:00PM today (Sept. 8th). Destination unknown...

Dick

OCS 517 dropping its passengers at Durham. Train will run to Rockingham and run around. Recrew there later on.

40MPH heat restriction and signal troubles resulting in very late running Downeasters today...

Dick

I noticed Downeaster 694 was running almost an hour late today.

The business train came south through Durham around 4:30-5:00 or so.

What does the GRS b-train usually consist of?

Tadman wrote:What does the GRS b-train usually consist of?

MEC 516 and MEC 517 pulling two nice old coaches.

They used to have three coaches:

http://naphotos.nerail.org/showpic/?pho ... 826525.jpg

Not sure what ever happened to the stainless one. This was the only time I ever saw it.

http://naphotos.nerail.org/showpic/?pho ... 625225.jpg

A few years back when Guilford was selling off the last two U18s, I think they had a passenger car for sale too. As to where it ended up, I have no idea.

They actually had a few cars for sale at one point. One was ex-Amtrak, acquired by Guilford at some point in the '80s but never actually operated by Guilford, and I think there were one or two MEC cars from the original MEC business train.

The two cars that currently make up the PAR business train are ex-D&H, I believe.

Is there a reason why PAR doesn't use their new image PanAm GP40 wide cabs to pull these business trains?

johnpbarlow wrote:Is there a reason why PAR doesn't use their new image PanAm GP40 wide cabs to pull these business trains?

A few possible reasons:

The 516 and 517 have nice, fully-refurbished cab interiors -- comfy seats, etc. The two Pan Am units probably still have old, worn cab interiors.

Maybe they think it would look odd to have the locos be one color and the cars be another color. (Then again, when did they start caring about their image?)

Maybe they're going to wait until they can repaint the cars, or repaint the 516 and 517, or both.

(The cars received fresh coats of Guilford paint not very long ago, and it's still in great shape, so it may be a while before Fink&Fink&Mellon decide to spend bucks on repainting them into Pan Am colors. Or it could happen tomorrow. One never really knows with those guys.)