Conrail "NYC" Coalporters

[w neal]

The standard brown Conrail Coalporters. I know they were restenciled with NYC reporting marks to indicate those destined for CSX ownership. I was wondering if there was a time, prior to the split, when these could have been seen being pulled by standard Conrail power? I.E. with no CSX power pulling them? If so, how long was that period?

Please educate me.

[learmoia]

As I recall, Conrail started to Reinstall stuff pre-split by maybe 6-12 months.... NYC cars to CSX and PRR locos to NS.. CR locos to CSX, and CR cars to NS.. in that same time period the 2nd order of SD80s was changed to CSX spec SD70MACs and NS spec SD70s, but all arrived in Conrail paint.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I'm not an expert on that period of Conrail (I try and not think about it), but I do believe that there was indeed about a year of overlap.

That said, finding matched sets of Conrail power post split was responsible for numerous near death experiences for me, like this one:
http://railfanning.kapuscinski.net/2008/08/a-couple-of-chases-during-the-august-2008-crhs-rail-b-q/

[CPBelt]

The standard brown Conrail Coalporters. I know they were restenciled with NYC reporting marks to indicate those destined for CSX ownership. I was wondering if there was a time, prior to the split, when these could have been seen being pulled by standard Conrail power? I.E. with no CSX power pulling them? If so, how long was that period?

Please educate me.

I was just looking at prints of these that I found in an old box. The date is July 10, 1998. They were in Altoona at the Curve. I don't have shots of the lead units. Hope that helps a bit.

Bob W
http://crcyc.railfan.net/

[GonzoCRFan]

I was wondering if there was a time, prior to the split, when these could have been seen being pulled by standard Conrail power? I.E. with no CSX power pulling them? If so, how long was that period?

I spent 3 days in the Altoona area in early July of '98 and NYC stenciled cars were already showing up, so they were getting the new stencils as early as June of '98. NS-patched locomotives weren't showing up yet, that started around August/September 1998. CSX and NS didn't finish patching/renumbering locomotives until the end of 1999 at the earliest. So there was a window of about 18 months where you could see NYC cars being hauled by unadulterated Conrail power. But, the farther you got into 1999, the likelihood of finding sets of unpatched CR power became progressively less likely, especially after the operational split on 5/31. Not only were CR units slowly being dispersed through much bigger new systems, but NS rounded up about 2 dozen dash-9s and sent them to Conway just before the split because they wanted everyone to know who the new sheriff in town was...

[learmoia]

Even living out in Iowa.. seeing full sets of Conrail power (with or without home road leaders) was still common as late as 2001

I've got a shot of an LMS C40-8 paired with a GP38-2 both in NS Patch... on the IC (CN) on a westbound grain train.. around 2001
I also recall seeing a C40/SD60 Trio all in Blue along the Mississippi River on BNSF in 1999 or 2000..

At the same time, there was quite a bit of 2nd hand Blue CR units running around on the IMRL and IANR, along with the LMSX units running on CN.

With all that said...

Per CRCYC..
The 'CSX' SD70MACs were delivered in April 1998 as CR 4130-4144
The 'NS' SD70s were delivered in July-October 1998 as CR 2557-2580

The merger was approved in August 22 1998, and completed in June 1 1999..
As I recall, in that time.. cars allocated to CSXT were reinitialed as NYC..

So.. between Sept 1 1998 and June 1 1999, NYC coal porters should have been increasingly common.
At the same time.. PRR patched locomotives would also be included..