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  • Did the Penn Central E33 ever run in passenger service

  • Discussion relating to the Penn Central, up until its 1976 inclusion in Conrail. Visit the Penn Central Railroad Historical Society for more information.
Discussion relating to the Penn Central, up until its 1976 inclusion in Conrail. Visit the Penn Central Railroad Historical Society for more information.

Moderator: JJMDiMunno

 #645756  by imodelho
 
Did the e33 ever run passenger service, I model ho scale and the e33 looks like it belongs pulling a string of phase 1 amtrak amfleet cars. Just wondering if it ever really ran.
Thanks
Gregg
 #645804  by ex Budd man
 
imodelho wrote:Did the e33 ever run passenger service, I model ho scale and the e33 looks like it belongs pulling a string of phase 1 amtrak amfleet cars. Just wondering if it ever really ran.
Thanks
Gregg
Maybe as a rescue for a dead G or Meatball. I never heard of it but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Amtrak did use E-44s on non revenue trains.
Hey its your railroad do what you want. Remember the great HO modeler John Allen had dinosaurs on his Gorre & Dafided RR (pronounced gorry and defeated) John loved humorous touches and never took his modeling too seriously. Have fun, leave the rivet counting and hair splitting to the 'foamers' :-D
 #646285  by JimBoylan
 
There is a published account of an E-33 rescuing a Southbound, probably Florida train in a snow storm. The engineer applied the emergency brakes when he realized that the locomotive wasn't going to fit under the wires in the tunnel at the South end of the lower level platforms at Washington Union Station.
 #646622  by DutchRailnut
 
I doubt the story very much, as the E-33 and E-44 were both not higher than 14 foot 6 inch and could actually fit thru New York tunnels.
The New Haven line can't acommodate locomotives over 14 foot 6 inch due to low catenary clearance.
 #646738  by H.F.Malone
 
The height of an E-33, when they were NYNH&H EF-4s, was 15 feet - 4 7/8 inches to the top of the blower grid hatch, and 15 feet - 6 inches from the top of a locked-down pantograph (both from top of rail).

So, the basic steel body of the things was higher than 15 feet. It is indeed likely that the unit would have grounded out on the WUS tunnel wire.

Info from NYNH&H diagram sheet dated August 16, 1963.
 #646824  by Noel Weaver
 
H.F.Malone wrote:The height of an E-33, when they were NYNH&H EF-4s, was 15 feet - 4 7/8 inches to the top of the blower grid hatch, and 15 feet - 6 inches from the top of a locked-down pantograph (both from top of rail).

So, the basic steel body of the things was higher than 15 feet. It is indeed likely that the unit would have grounded out on the WUS tunnel wire.

Info from NYNH&H diagram sheet dated August 16, 1963.
I totally agree with this, the pantographs had to be lowered on PRR equipment at the phase break and at Cos Cob over the air gap.
Penn Central had no intention of retaining the freight operation to Bay Ridge and thus no use for the electric freight motors
existed after the takeover of the NHRR. Freight operations to and from Oak Point remained but traffic was reduced
between Cedar Hill and the Oak Point Terminal, much of the traffic went right up the Hudson to and from Selkirk rather
than to Cedar Hill. I do not have a record of the dates of the last runs with freight motors but it was not long after
January 1, 1969.
Noel Weaver
 #657090  by Penn Central
 
ex Budd man wrote:
imodelho wrote:Did the e33 ever run passenger service, I model ho scale and the e33 looks like it belongs pulling a string of phase 1 amtrak amfleet cars. Just wondering if it ever really ran.
Thanks
Gregg
Maybe as a rescue for a dead G or Meatball. I never heard of it but that doesn't mean it didn't happen. Amtrak did use E-44s on non revenue trains.
Hey its your railroad do what you want. Remember the great HO modeler John Allen had dinosaurs on his Gorre & Dafided RR (pronounced gorry and defeated) John loved humorous touches and never took his modeling too seriously. Have fun, leave the rivet counting and hair splitting to the 'foamers' :-D
Maybe for a G, but not a Meatball in Penn Central days. They didn't go into service until 1978. Conrail time. Of course, it is possible that a disabled passenger train might have been rescued by an E-33 during that era, or PRR days.
 #660849  by Zeke
 
Anything is possible. When a train goes down the dispatcher with permission of the chief dispatcher will order any available locomotive to perform a rescue.I worked on the PC New Jersey division from 1970 till 1976 and I do not recall an E-33 being used for a rescue. Most of the time the E-33's were running back and forth in pairs from The Meadows to Enola in pool freight service. Now and then a single unit would be operated on road local N-12/N-13 between Morrisville yard and Waverly. I had an E-33 on Mail-9 one night with 27 cars and the thing couldn't get out of it's own way. I also had a pair of them on a 70 car TV-12 one night from Harrisburg to So. Karny and could not get them much over 55 mph. Their best application was in heavy drag service pulling coal and iron ore. They finally wised up and assigned them to freight trains that made a number of pickups and setouts or the previously mentioned mineral freight trains. They were not designed for high speed service like the freight geared GG-1's or the brute force of 5000 horsepower E-44a motors.BTW E-44's were used in passenger service at times (during snowstorms ) pulling GG-1s which provided steam heat to the train. The E's were geared for 80 mph and would do 90 to 100 mph if you let them go.In later years the trucks were starting to wear and the speed was reduced to 50 then back to 60 mph in the last years of Conrail service.

In defense of the E-33 locomotive, the crews liked them as they were excellent pullers and almost impossible to get them to slip. They were quiet inside the cab, rode well, had great heat in the winter and very rarely broke down. They also retained those wild sounding New Haven chime horns IIRC manufactured by Nathan corp.
 #661215  by Zeke
 
Jim Boylans post quite possibly is correct. Thinking about it, single E-33's were used in helper service thru the B & P tunnels in Baltimore and based at ZOO tower in Philly to help westbounds get up and over the grade on the mainline at Bryn Mar. I know for a fact a GG-1 fit like a hand in glove when reversing into the tunnel at WUS after cutting off the train to reverse for Ivy City Engine terminal. I dont think a E-33 would fit and it is possible the Chesapeake division Movement Director ordered the tunnel helper to pull a broken down train to Washington.I had two Bayview ( Baltimore ) based GP-30's pull my train No. 177 from Bowie to WUS once, when my G died, though we platformed on the upper level and left the whole shooting match there.
 #1093708  by Zeke
 
Tad if you can get your hands on the book Pennsy Power two by Al stauffer there is a picture of an E-44 coupled to a GG-1 pulling a passengr train passing thru LANE interlocking in a snow storm. The G-s had trouble with powdered snow shorting out the traction motors during blizzards and the E-s would sub for them. The GG-1 would keep its pan up to run the steam generator to keep the train warm but the traction motor circuits would be cut out making it a ten axle steam generator car.
 #1119782  by mitch kennedy
 
All that E33 talk got me back to Arsenal. I posted as a summer intern on the eve of CR-spent 3rd trick most times learning off the clock with the WAG, now a NJT conductor. Winter of 75-76 with a northbound TV train at Arsenal. Zeke-was this you on board???
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