N-Trizzy2609 wrote:So now that IMW is coming out with an updated Silverliner II I glad stripped the SEPTA stripes off. I repainted it and redecaled it to a Conrail era Silverliner II. This one for you GEC. BTW, this train is going to be a "Special" Silverliner II and will be parked in the yard alot. It make a cool looking model though.
lol, I figured it was only a matter of time!
anyways, looks pretty good. I will say though, that TYPICALLY, when SEPTA began applying meatballs, it scraped the Penn Central/Reading Company Logos off the flanks, but left them on the face of the MU car, if they left them at all. The short of it is you should check photos, i don't doubt there is a paint scheme like that out there, but its worth looking anyway.
The long story-
I think a lot of it has to do with the railroad politics of the time. the Silverliner IIs and IIIs were bought by the city of Philadelphia, but owned by their respective railroads. the Silverliner IVs were bought and owned by SEPTA in 1974, but operated by Penn Central and the Reading. As a result, Silverliner IVs often carried both SEPTA and Railroad logos. When Conrail came along in 1976, one of its earliest objectives was to get rid of costly commuter service, and no one wanted to spend the money on renaming equipment that was not expected to last under Conrail. In the late 80s, Conrail began pushing for legislation to remove passenger service from its responsibilities.
This was known as the Northeast Rail Service Act of 1981 (NERSA). It basically states that effective midnight of January 1, 1983, that Conrail could divest itself from commuter service. Many Commuter agencies, like NJ transit, were putting their own logos on equipment even before the act was passed (NJ transit didn't become a rail operator until 1983, yet full NJT Disco stripes began appearing on equipment as early as 1980). The hope was to create new images for entities like SEPTA and NJ Transit as different, better and more progressive than the old PRR/PC and Reading, in the case of the former. The hope was to give the Commuter service a new fresh look and the impression that it was free to do what it had to do instead of being controlled by clunky freight railroads.
As a result, Many SEPTA meatballs started showing up on units about this time, and the Penn Central/ Reading logos began disappearing off the flanks of Silverliner IIs and IIIs. Indeed, some units had been running nearly naked between 1976 and 1980, with only the road numbers giving any indication of which railroad the MU care belonged to. I have photos of Several Silverliner IIs and IIIs with NOTHING on them. Even the Silverliner IVs started loosing their "railroad logos".
Some SEPTA Block Logos showed up in 1981 on RDCs, but they don't appear to be widespread until after 1983.
Elite Juice Jack Modeler.