I've been Penn-Centralized!

[Dave V]

I did it!

I've been eyeing a MicroTrains 50' smooth-side Penn Central boxcar at my LHS for some time.  At $13.95 (-15% club discount since I've diplayed my layout at his show), it's a fair price indeed.

So today I bought it.



There are some discrepencies from the prototype (most noticble being the door and the style of lettering above the car number):



...but otherwise a beautiful car.  I plan to use the lower photo as a weathering guide.

My 5-year-old son is obsessed with Amtrak and with the occasional Conrail GP38-2 used as a helper in and out of our town of Apex, NC (so named because the SAL, now CSX, climbs grades from both sides). 

So I thought maybe developing a late PC/early CR/Amtrak roster would help keep my tiny layout interesting until I can go bigger.  Who knows; I may even stay PC/CR and make the retro-Pennsy equipment I have now become the special run stuff.

[Wlal13again]

I do the same thing Dave. I havesome PC stuff, I backdate my 1988 Conrail stuff once in a while..

[Puddington]

 "I've been Penn-Centralized!"

Yesh..... that sounds like it hurts.... is the treatment covered by your medical plan ?  ???

I actually heard that that is illegal to be "Penn-Centralized" in the state of South Dakota and certain parts of Maine......

Nice car - I, too run ONE and ONE only PC 50' on the rails of the Samuel Ridge.... orphan and all that !

[ai5629]

If you consult your Morning Sun Penn Central Color Guide and turn to page 36, you will see the prototype that Micro Trains used for this car.  The paint scheme is very accurate, however the car is not.  This is something that is frequently associated with Micro Trains according to many on this board.  However, if I was a modeler of a railroad other than the PC, I wouldn't care that this car was not accurate.  It represents the PC well, and if you model the 1970's you must have PC cars in your trains.  It was the largest railroad of that era, and must therefore be represented.  I model Conrail in June of 1984, and I could care less if a Sante Fe or Union Pacific boxcar is painted onto the correct type of car.  As long as the car looks good, it serves the purpose of western interchange traffic.  My Conrail, PC, EL, RDG, and PRR equipment I like to be much closer to the prototype however.  Thanks.

[ljudice]

First of all, to Dave - congratulation on the PC move. It really was an interesting era and someday I might consider moving in that direction.

Re: MTL - the issue for me is that there are PC cars that are near EXACT matches for PC (or other) cars. But instead of doing the exact matches, they go and do cars that are not even close.

That's what is so irksome to me!!! 

[Dave V]

Okay, here's my take on it.

Yeah, the car's off.  I guess I should have avoided the impulse 'till I did more research.

On the other hand, my main attraction to PC freight cars is how awesome the rust looks on that faded sheep-sh*t green color.  However, I need lotsa practice.

If it comes out great, I'll swallow the prototype-less-ness and run it anyway.  If it comes out like crap, then no real loss.  This was priced cheaper at my LHS than the correct Atlas X71 with PCA reporting marks.

Now, my bigger thought is that after I've accumulated enough Conrail and Penn Central love I can also have structure swap-out.  For example, two version s of the same interlocking tower.  One would be in the 3-color Pennsy with keystone scheme, and the other would be either in weathered gray or PC green with the PC/CR style signs.

That might make this tiny layout even more fun!!!

[wm3798]

Yes, I too have a bad case of "worms"....


My original layout concept was an early Conrail theme, with lots of PC power and paint outs, Amtrak phase 2, and a spin-off shortline with a live interchange.  When I see Ed's growing collection of paint outs, I sometimes pine for those days.  I cut my railfanning teeth back in the late 70's with trips to Enola and the Middle Division.  Those big stone arches, the lousy track, Trailvans with six geeps up front...


(They did that to make sure that at least 3 of them were still working by the end of the trip...)

Between the historic landscape built by the Pennsy (and the other CR predecessors of course...) the corporate intrigue that created and ultimately brought down the PC, and the determination that Conrail and its people had to bring it all out of the ashes, and literally changed the way the nation's railroads did business... makes for some fascinating stuff.

We're with you 100%, Dave!
Lee

[Bob Bufkin]

I was thinking along the same line but got innoculated before it was too late!!!  I have to admit that very early PC was an interesting time.  The PC color guide is full of some really great looking equipment.  Even the green passenger equipment mixed in with tuscan red and silver equipment would make an interesting train.  Somewhere on this site someone posted a photo of a PC E unit in tuscan red which was so awful that it looked like the whole thing was a piece of rust.
Bob

[3rdrail]

Having been a Sales Representative for the Penn Central from its birth to its death, I would never consider modeling it! it wasn't "corporate intrigue", it was the loss of of its customer base as plants were shuttered  in the "rust belt", the failure of management and employees equally to work together. The red team-green team rivalry ran all the way through and down the organization, and just plain old piss-poor service.

It was not fun (oh, occasionally there was some fun, like the time we had a staff meeting in San Antonio, went to a strip joint, and the AA to the Mgr.-Southwestern Sales got drunk and got up on the stage and started stripping.), so I don't want to reproduce it.

[John]

I saw this on Atlas .. it fits right in .. where is the tunnel / bridge combo?

[Dave V]

Folks have strong feelings about the PC, and they're rarely good.

I'm really leaning toward doing very early Conrail which was still heavy w/ PC stuff.

The ideal train would be a blue CR diesel with a black PC/CR paint-out behind with maybe a RDG paint-out for a third, with a mix of cars from the Northeast bankrupts, and a CR cabin.

I love the Pennsy and am not giving up a single piece of my PRR roster.  Allowing a second era (namely the mid- to late-70s) gives me the chance to model what I remember as a young boy (I was born too late for Pennsy), as well as to strike a balance with my 5-year-old, who loves Conrail and Amtrak.  Of course, he'd rather run P42s and Superliners and doesn't quite realize that the Conrail diesels he sees around here are owned by CSX and will be repainted in due time, but...

The attraction to model what one remembers as a child is a very strong one.  If only I'd been more aware of the GG1s and all of the rainbow Conrail paint-outs I took for granted when I was so young...  All gone now, even Conrail.

I did Conrail railfanning from Penn State as a college student...  ...so the day they moved a Conrail (ex-PC ex-PRR) GP30 into the Railroad Museum of PA (along with the Silverliner cars I rode with my mother from Lancaster to Philadelphia), I began to realize how much had changed.

Speaking of PC and Lancaster...  Anyone remember the pair of PC baggage cars that sat next to the head house at Lancaster station well into the 90s?  They finally came out to Strasburg for restoration.  It'll be interesting to see if they come back PC or NYC.

[Dave V]

I saw this on Atlas .. it fits right in .. where is the tunnel / bridge combo?

/>

That ROCKS!!!

[randgust]

As luck would have it, I started serious railfanning about 1974.  That let me catch the tail end of PC, EL, and be pretty well 'trained' on the 35mm when Conrail hit.  It kept up full blast through the rainbow era and never really slowed down until about 1992-3, when I moved away from Conrail, or more accurately, Conrail moved away from me.

I've got more prints and slides than I'll EVER know what to do with, so if you're looking for weathering and photo ideas, just holler and I'll fire up the scanner.  I made my first trips to Bellefonte, Enola, and Altoona between 1974 and 1976.

One thing I'll comment.   From about 1968 to 1972, PC was NOT a disasterous looking property on the equipment end.   ROW yes, just awful.  Complete weeds and rust and rot.  But the PC equipment (being secured by equipment trusts) was usually comparatively freshly painted; it got dirty fast enough but still painted and they cared more about paint than a lot else.  Now the oldest ex-PRR stuff was getting nasty... we used to get PRR 40' boxcars up here with patch-job tuscan paint on them, a little PC only on the reporting marks, and a stencil that said '40 year old car not to be used for offline shipment'.  Stuff like the GP7's might look bad and be a patch job, but many of the newer units (like the GP35's, 40's, 38's) were just dirty, not rusty.  Remember PC made it two years before they ever declared bankruptcy and what they did do was primarily painting.  I really don't think PC ever washed much of anything though...ever.  Greg, care to confirm corporate policy?

One of my favorite PC shots is a near-new GP38-2 and a freshly painted PC transfer caboose - submerged frame deep in weeds.  To me, THAT says PC.  Remember that it was started in 1968 and died in 1976; that's only midlife for most paint.  But OMG, the track... you just can't appreciate how bad the track was unless you were there.  FRA track standards hadn't been invented yet, or speed limits.  One of my very favorite PC-era shots is the local blasting out of town behind a  couple GP's, and an entire train of LPG tank cars (i.e. bombs on wheels) behind them.  The rails are invisible, it looks like they are running through a wheat field.  Yet they are running fast enough to put a 'bow wave' of wind across the frame-high grass on the rails.  Railroaders look at that shot today and just twitch.   Same deal on late-era PRR; what looks so different is how bad they let the vegetation get.  You're gonna need a lot of silflor to do it right!

Now if you want WEATHERING, go to early Conrail Rainbow.  I'm still fascinated by that.  I have a shot of Lehigh Valley to CR that looks like the Lehigh Valley conceal was done with a crayon - actually it was a can of spray paint that washed off.  I have a GP 40 that you can read NEW YORK CENTRAL, Penn Central, and is stencilled "CR" over top of that.   And on and on.  Crash Repainting and Cursory Repairs era.

I have a lot of PC on my layout, simply because of the size.   I have a couple incredibly battered gondolas, and a faded (but not rusted) boxcar or two, etc. But for 1972, PC as a 'disaster' still hasn't quite sunk in yet...the message is only painfully apparent to employees and those that live beside the track trying to find it with a metal detector.  The image they projected was still incredibly optimistic.

[wm3798]

I must find a picture of the caboose in that video with the worm logo...  I've seen models with that scheme, but never a proto photo...  Any thoughts?
Lee

[randgust]

Yeah, that video is great!  Who knows where that was shot?  There's plenty enough clues there.

Wow, what you could do before anti-vandalism panels were standard on auto racks.....

Oh, Dave... another thing (you may not like).  At least here in PA, PC's preoccupation with appearances over substance was best exhibited by what they did on buildings.   The B&B crews in this area were notorious for the 'jade green dip' approach.  Trim??  What's TRIM?   You put green in a paint sprayer and a boom truck and get upwind!   I have distant and closeup shots of two structures - WYE tower at Hollidaysburg and Wellsboro Jct., PA, where they painted OVER TOP of the windows with the jade green spray gun rather than take the time to either cover or mask.   On the Wellsboro Jct. station (ex-NYC), they took it a step further -- they only painted the sides of the building toward the public road.  The back of the building was never painted at all and was weathered wood.  The front was green, from the roof shingles to the grass, completely over the windows.  Where the agent was they'd applied some turpentine to a rag and wiped down a couple spots so he could see out.

Yeah, that's the PC I remember....

And people wonder why I fell in love with the Santa Fe!