Modeling a Hudson Division suburban train of 1941

Tommy,

You shouldn't be surprised about the S-motor being used on a revenue train. That happened several times when i was at GCT.

I had a call one evening from Hudson engr. John Xifos in which he asked if I felt like taking a ride. Amtrak #79's inbound Turbo had knocked off the 3rd rail shoes on both ends and rather than take the time to replace them an S-motor was assigned as power. I asked John how much time we would lose up to HM and his response was "Why would we lose any time?"

We didn't! At higher speed, it seemed like one side of the S-motor was trying to catch up to the other side; a little rough, but enjoyable.

When a kid back in 1940's, my father took us all over the Hudson line from Harmon down to NYC. We had a summer house in Croton Point. My fater worked in Navy yard, and commuted on the line. Our hang out was the Harmon yards.
All trains bound to GCT or NYC, were switched to Box Electrics as we called them like the Century, the Comadore and Pacemaker etc. Also, the local trains were MU's deployed from Harmon to NYC and back. Therefore, your father would have rode an electric.

Tommy Meehan wrote:I thought that shot of 110 was a fan trip photo too. I also know people who rode it (I didn't even know about it at the time) and I think it was sponsored by the Electric Railroaders Association in 1966 or 1967.

November 13, 1966 to be exact.

I was on it --- a great trip.
There are a number of photos of this trip in the book New York City Electrified Railroads on Color Volume I -- Grand Central Terminal (Morning Sun Books, 2010), including of the train on the West Side freight line behind a diesel.

BTW, I also --- quite by chance --- rode behind an S on a regular Harlem train from GCT to NWP in 1964.

TCurtin wrote:

Tommy Meehan wrote:I thought that shot of 110 was a fan trip photo too. I also know people who rode it (I didn't even know about it at the time) and I think it was sponsored by the Electric Railroaders Association in 1966 or 1967.

November 13, 1966 to be exact.

The slide I have of an S-motor fan trip was marked Nov. '65, but I guess the photographer could have been wrong...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ottomatic77/5199655788/

-=otto-

At the risk of straying a little further from the original topic, I was doing some spring cleaning and found a 1997 NYC calendar which has a picture of this 11/13/66 fan trip on the West Side line at 30th St., with GP-9 5927 doing the honors. (FWIW, the caption inaccurately says it's a GP-7, and 5927 was a freight geep...so between this engine and the S motor, there was no steam heat on this trip? In late November? Could've been a wee bit chilly in those coaches). The stainless steel car in the middle of the consist doesn't look like a coach, maybe it's a diner/automat car. There are no vestibule doors, only a single door on the side. Photo credited to Matthew J. Herson, Jr.

Very interesting comments Bill. I'm posting a link to an on-line NYC roster, from a site called the Diesel Shop, pretty accurate, I think. (There's another site with a roster that includes the NYC classes but I couldn't find it. I did print it out once but can't access my copy at the moment.)

Anyway, apparently the 5927 in the photo was a passenger GP7, the former 5812. Or 5807, couldn't quite figure that out. The difference is, everything had been renumbered pre-PC. The GP9s were in the 7300 series by that point in time.

Quick edit (Maybe the original 5807 was renumbered 5927 for passenger service, then renumbered 5812 pre-PC?)

I'm from the area only I didn't hear about the trip in time to ride. But I vividly remember what a sunny beautiful day it was. No steam heat? Aww for a bunch of railfans? No problem! LOL

http://www.thedieselshop.us/NYC.HTML

Doh!!! The 1966 re-numbering! Good catch, Tommy.

I saw that the Diesel Shop site referenced William Edson's NYCS Diesel Locomotives as it's source, so I went to the bookshelf and dusted off my copy. GP-7 5807 (DRSP-4n) renumbered to 5927, and there's a footnote that says "previous number restored" for this locomotive and six others in this sub-class.

Thanks again Bill.

Here's a couple links to photos from George Elwood's Fallen Flags site-

I couldn't find 5807 or 5927 (1st or 2nd) but I found a Dennis Schmidt Photo taken at Elkhart IN on 05/24/58 of GP-9 5924-

http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/nyc/nyc5924ads.jpg

Then a Jerome Rosenfeld photo (collection of GPE) of GP-7 5925 taken at the fuel rack in Kingston NY in August 1967.

http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/nyc/nyc5925gea.jpg

Note the 5925 has the three louvers under the cab window (a GP-7 spotting feature) while GP-9 5924 doesn't.