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(erielack) Treasure in Altoona...

Hello all,

	I just came back from a 3-day jaunt to scenic Altoona, PA. This
weekend was the "Altoona Railfest," a yearly event held by the Altoona
Railroaders Memorial Museum. Of course, Altoona is the home town of the PRR,
but I had my eye open for other items of personal interest (snicker,
snicker). What did I find? Well...

	* CONRAIL E8 4022. Yup, Erie/EL 833 was on display at the Juniata
shop complex, with a pair of CR and one NS heavyweight business cars. It had
been involved in a wreck while on CSX a week ago, but the unit appeared to
be fine. One fan told us he heard that both trucks were cracked during the
wreck, but when I posed this to one of the CR shop personnel, he said he
never heard that and as far as he knew, the unit was just fine. This unit is
schedule to go to CSX. As an aside, I was told that after Conrail paints up
a batch of 7 BNSF C44-9W's for GE, they are to paint the 4020 (ex-PRR) for
NS in their new executive scheme, which is the Southern "Crescent" paint
styling but utilizing the NS maroon and gold found on their business car
fleet. Keep those eyes peeled...
	* ERIE BAY WINDOW HACK. Yup, just like Bill K. said, it's still
there. Unfortunately, it's wedged in behind a building and almost impossible
to get a good clean shot of it. (though there's a Reading tank car (!) at
the front of that line that doesn't look too bad... :)
	* EL FREIGHT EQUIPMENT. There's a small scrap yard on the southeast
side of Altoona's main yard that always has some interesting stuff there,
this time including: -- An EL 40' boxcar with decent lettering but horribly
bad paint. The Erie lettering is visible on the ends! -- An EL 50' PS-1 -
lettering is obliterated, but you can still make it out if you look at it
from an angle -- Some ex-EL gondolas which will be scrapped. In CR paint,
but we know the heritage! :)   Finally, a big surprise to me was a
33000-series car, in decent paint considering its age, mixed in with a long
string of CR hoppers and carrying a full load of coal, coming into town on a
unit coal train. Woo-hoo!
	* EL BUSINESS CAR #2. Wow! Here was the treat of the day. A special
excursion consisting of 12 private cars is doing a large circle tour as a
"farewell to Conrail." First car out on this train? EL business car #2, in
full EL paint! From what people there told me, it's privately owned by an
individual in Philadelphia, and stored indoors most of the time. It very
infrequently gets out onto the road, so seeing it is a rarity, apparently.
By the way, which EL business car is at Steamtown? The number escapes me...
	* EL SD45-2. Surprise, surprise. I saw one (didn't see the number)
roaring by in a coal train, but I was aboard the excursion train and thus
didn't get a shot of this one...

Juniata has been drastically cleaned up. Only three heavily-cannibalized
SW's remain - everything else is gone or scrapped. One person familiar with
the shops told me that last year there was an SDP45 (!) in their deadline of
units. Unfortunately, he said it was heavily buried, and all that you could
make out is the distinctive radiator and elongated end section, in CR blue.
He's not sure if it's there anymore, either. Anyone know? I could find no
sign of "Q#1" (ex-EL 3632), which makes me wonder if it's been scrapped?

Also, CR has a new, slate-gray shop switcher, an SW1200 numbered #1200.
Could this be a former DL&W SW1200? Anyone know its heritage?

Yeah, I did get a few :) shots of this stuff. Photos to follow later this
week!

	- Paul


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