Pan Am / Guilford Bashing

Greetings friends:
I have been a member for a while and I have seen some bashing and complaints of my favorite railroad.
First of all, I am not an employee, nor do I have any interest in this railroad besides being an interested railfan. I would love to see this railroad run with great equipment and great rail but I do not think that these attributes are coming anytime soon.
Tim Mellon and company want to make a profit and that is what they seem to do, after all it is the railroad that supports the airline.
With all this said, I do have an observation to make.
What we have here is a railroad that is nothing more than a rolling museum! Before you start to criticize, think for a moment. Where can you go and see such a "rag-tag fugitive fleet" parading down the tracks?
Most of their infrastructure is quite old. It is sort of like going back years in railroad time and taking a look.
I am old enough to remember all of the stuff that was just after the steam era, but did I get off my duff to record this history with photos? No, not as much as I should have.
So, what am I ranting about, you might ask?
Carley Simon once sang "these are the good old days".
Stop bitching and get out there and start taking pictures of all the stuff that you now take for granted. I know now that I wish I had taken more pictures of F Units etc. I was there and I had the time but I did not do it.
Do yourself and future generations of railfans a favor, record history.
Take a few pictures of equipment, structures and the long forgoten right of way. What is todays everyday photo is tomorrows history!
Thank you for your time....
Jerry Kelley

Jerry,

That was very well said! I'll admit I bash Guilford/Pan Am basically every chance I get. From the "outside" they are quite a bottom feeder in today's rail world. They have however, hung on for 20+ years. Longer than Conrail now!

From the picture end, I started filming GRS late. Try 2000! From there on, I spent almost every weekend of the following three years out in District 4. During then, especially 2001, activity was the best in years.
No lie, we could see 6+ trains a day west of East Deerfield. Best was 9, including coal trains. I shot SO many MOED/EDMO, SRED/EDSR and so forth. Nowadays, I'm damn glad I spent those few years chasing trains there. Have many shots of roster power and train symbols that don't even exist anymore.

Now if I could only convince myself of that with the GE crap that runs on CSX presently, but that's for a different forum!

J Bray

They've got a lot of problems... but no doubt about it, they're still a fascinating railroad to watch and observe.

Any railroad is better than no railroad at all!

Any railroad is better than no railroad at all!

True that. I don't know enough about Guilford (or railroads in general) to be much of a critic...I just want to take pictures. I have yet to get any shots of a Guilford train. Unless the NHN-powered DOBO counts, but that was at night and you can't see anything really. I'm too busy with school to be able to tell when trains go by during the day. I'll just have to get lucky! Better start spending more time by the tracks...

Many times,Guilford/PanAm goes out of it's way to please the communities it runs through. If someone complains about idling engines, the TOM's will not re-crew trains at that location, or they will tell the crew to hold back from the houses. I think many communities and residents are unreasonable with the railroad, they know it is there, but they don't want to see or hear it. On the rare occasion there is an accident, they get upset about hazmat, even though there may be none involved (recently, a resident in Lowell insisted to the Fire Department a tank car was leaking dangerous fumes, when it was actually a Carbon Dioxide tank car, the "hissing" was the vent valves, which is normal. Even when this was explained repeatedly, the resident would not stop calling 911 until the tank car was moved). On another occasion, a train was stopped at a red signal, waiting for another to pass. A resident called police and insisted that the train be moved immediately, not realizing or caring about the circumstances. He yelled repeatedly at the crew, who was trying to explain to him that they could not move the train on their own, they had to have the proper authority. On other occasions, residents have broken windows on unnoccupied locomotives, tried to shut them down in freezing weather, or thrown rocks at them from their yards.

I believe people who do stuff like listed above should be dropped off in Iraq, promptly.

Whoa. Hold on. Is this thread just to vent about how much we think Pan Am/Guilford sucks? Don't we have enough of that already? Let's rethink this and move on.

-otto-

My interpretation of the sentiment of the original post was basically "despite all their warts, they're enjoyable to watch, and you'd better enjoy 'em now because they may not be around forever." And I think most of us agree with that.

Otto Vondrak wrote:Whoa. Hold on. Is this thread just to vent about how much we think Pan Am/Guilford sucks? Don't we have enough of that already? Let's rethink this and move on.

-otto-

well just read the title to this thread!" Pan AM/Guilford Bashing"!

Bashing like this?

As a kid, I always had Conrail's ex-NYC route through South Bend, IN, five minutes from the house, and right across the street from Dad's office. Conrail ran the newest and brightest power they could get their hands on, to the poin that SD50's were old-school. The only non-widecab units I saw in the later '90's were GP15-1's with transfers to GTW/CN. I longed for interesting trains, and I think you guys watching PAR should be thankful you've got something other than a constant parade of stack trains with brand new wide-cab GE's and EMD's. Not that I'm complaining about my front row seat on an exceptionally busy line, but a little variety would have been interesting. (I got that variety with NS - they'll put anything on a train, and lots of anything)

Moral of the story - be thankful for your variety. If Rail America bought PAR, it'd be all red/wht/blu geeps.

I agree with these sentiments, Guilford / Pan Am has a lot of unique features.

Consider the motive power - the 2 SD-26's I believe these are the last of their kind in the US outside of a RR museum. Also the GP-35's and the high nose GP40's.

Also , my impression is that unlike other railroads like CSX, Guilford/Pan Am tries to cooperate with Amtrak and MBCR and expedite their trains.

Jon D

jonnhrr wrote:Consider the motive power - the 2 SD-26's I believe these are the last of their kind in the US outside of a RR museum.

I'm not aware of any in museums or overseas, which means they're probably the only two left on the planet!

Also , my impression is that unlike other railroads like CSX, Guilford/Pan Am tries to cooperate with Amtrak and MBCR and expedite their trains.

I can't speak for how they handle MBCR trains, but they do do a great job with the Downeaster, especially considering that it's mostly single-track territory. That doesn't surprise me, though... they need every penny they can get to keep the airline afloat, so it's in their best interest to keep the DE on time and thus avoid any penalties for excessive lateness.

I agree with MEC407, Guilford does play the system quite a bit. I bet they pushed a lot to have there own tracks used instead of the SLR's for the Brunswick expansion (I don't know if thats been yet confirmed but judging by reports I believe it has). If they can get rails upgraded without spending any money then letting Amtrak run on its rails is a small price to pay (As opposed to the tax payers who are paying for the upgrades)


On a seperate note, MEC407, are you going to the Sanford show?

While it is cool to see all that vintage power still in use by GRS, isn't it also part of the reason many of their units break down so often?