(erielack) PA's on the Northern & elsewhere

[Hhaines_@_aol.com]

Dear List and all,

Randy, thanks for sharing the F-3 commuter run image.  I do not have the 
dates for when the passenger F3s were re-geared for frieght use because 
Carleton (1988) just states that they  were re-geared for freight service 
after the E-8s arrived.  An early EL roster shows all remaining Erie F3 800s 
are listed as freight units without steam generators in Larry DeYoung's 1997 
Erie Lackawanna In Color, Volume 4, The Early Years.  The Erie 800 series 
F-3s did not have dynamic braking, meaning they would have been assigned 
largely to the west end.

2) Which Erie RS2s or RS3s were equipped with steam generators?

From Staufer and Westing's Erie Power (1970) passenger equipped RS units 
include:
RS-2s #900-919 (retained numbers into EL)
RS-3s #920-933 (retained numbers into EL)
RS-2s #950-954 (converted at Hornell Shops from #1000-1004)

4) Were the PAs regularly assigned to Erie's long-haul passenger trains
prior to the arrival of the E8s?  Or were steam generator equipped F3s
the normal power for these trains, and the PAs assigned to secondary
trains even in the early days?

I stated earlier that both PA-1s and F-3s carried the long distance trains 
for Erie from the time the PAs arrived (1949) until the E-8s started to 
arrive (January 1951). I am not sure what you mean by secondary trains. 
DeYoung (1997) states that there is evidence to show the PAs hauled freight 
trains as early as 1951, possibly earlier, and this review showed the PAs 
hauling other passenger trains like #27 as early as June 1951 (Carleton p 
200).

There were not enough passenger F-3s (from July 1947) to cover all 
long-distance passenger trains, so K-5s were stationed along the route to 
help when needed.  

In ERIE MEMORIES, Crist states that this practice (of K-5s and F-3s as backup 
for passenger trains) continued through 1952 when the PA-2s were delivered.  
Both Staufer in Erie Power and Carleton in The Erie Story indicated that a 
single PA was favored power for the long distance commuter runs from Jersey 
City to Port Jervis, Suffern, and Binghamton New York including trains #26, 
#27, #56, and #1169 (listed as photo evidence).

4. The photo of the PA on the Northern Branch shows the locomotive (road
 number unknown) still in its original black and yellow paint...had assumed 
it was from the early 1950s.  When were the PAs repainted in the two-tone 
green passenger scheme?   
I think there was an earlier thread with a list of what unit switched color 
schemes on what date, but I could not find it.

Units wearing the Erie yellow and black scheme late in the 1950s or 1960s 
include 

#851 as late as Sept 1955 (DeYoung, 1998, Erie Trackside with Robert Collins, 
page 100)  
#852 as late as January 1961 (DeYoung, 1998, page 97)  
#854 in July 1959, DeYoung 1998, p 74
#854 as late as June 1961 (DeYoung, 1998, page 97)
#859 in a wreck, August 1958 (DeYoung, 1998, page 98-99)  
#860 in June 1953, DeYoung 1998, page 49.
#861 in July 1958 (Carleton, The Erie Story, p202)

The 2-tone green scheme lasted well past merger years as evidenced by a pair 
of PAs in the scheme pulling the Pheobe Snow over the Pequest Fill of the New 
Jersey Cutoff in March 1964 (COVERED WAGONS, Early Road Diesels of the Erie 
Lackawanna, William S. Young, 1976, page 15).  

Plenty of evidence to show that not all Erie PAs left the black and yellow 
scheme, although I have not yet found black and yellow units with the MU 
fixture above the headlight.  

Those PA units I found in the 2-tone green by the summer of 1960 include:
#850 (Young 1976 p 13)
#853 (Young, 1976, p 16) 
#853 on Train #1, October 1960, DeYoung 1998 p 101 (black numbers on white 
background, MU recepticle above headlight)
#855 in July 1959, DeYoung 1998, p 74
#856 in July 1959, DeYoung 1998, p 74
#858 (Young, 1976 p 16)
#859 (Carleton, 1988, p 203, in 1959--must have been repainted after the 1958 
wreck)
#861 (Carleton, 1988, p 203)
#862 in July 1965, DeYoung 1998 p62.
#864  

Some other photos showing what the PAs hauled include:

On 19 August 1958, Al Holtz lensed Train #1169 pulled by B&Y PA #860, caught 
in Saddle Brook, New Jersey (Passaic Jct) viewed on Page 35, Sweetland, 1991, 
Erie Railroad in Color.  To be technically correct, it was 
not yet Saddle Brook but its predecessor "Rochelle Township" after being 
Saddle River Township and getting the Post Office confused with Upper Saddle 
River.  In 1959 the location became the Borough of Saddle Brook complete with 
an Erie Street that Y-ed from Midland Ave over to Market Street parallel to 
the Erie Bergen County line. 

On 28 June 1958, Erie #859, a PA-1, in black and yellow scheme was caught 
pulling a 13-car Pullman extra at 14th Street in Chicago by R. P. Olmsted as 
viewed on page 127, Sweetland 1991.

In the ELHS October 1998 Calendar, PA-1 Erie #858 in the yellow and black 
scheme was caught hauling 12 cars of Train #2 on 1 October 1954, with a 
trailing 2-tone green E-8 at Endicott, New York.

Oct 26 1960, both PA-2 #863 leaning E-8 #832 are in two-tone green on Train 
#1 through Glen Rock, New Jersey.  


Hope this provides some clues on these other questions. Howard Haines

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