01-18-2014, 02:18 PM
According to numerous photos and the Conrail Cyclopedia site, a number of Lehigh Valley locos went a year or more without being patched, including LV 214 and LV 7640. I had an early Atlas yellowbox 7640 that had been sitting in parts for over 25 years -- I finally got it together, added number board decals and weathering, and installed a DCC decoder. I also got a Walthers LV RS-2 and installed a DCC decoder:
I heard a presentation by a former LV chief dispatcher whose duties on the LV also included determining what locos went into consists and were assigned to trains. He said once Conrail happened, their motive power people got around to asking him why LV got so much more mileage out of its locos than Conrail was getting. He said the reason was that LV kept like locos with like in consists. Conrail, of course, didn't. I get the impression that many Alcos from Conrail constituents wound up in New Jersey and were MUed pretty much indiscriminately until the DeWitt rebuild program got going and the RS-3s went to Altoona for upgrade. I don't know if 214 was ever MUed with an RS-11, but on DCC, these work perfectly in a consist without any reprogramming.
I heard a presentation by a former LV chief dispatcher whose duties on the LV also included determining what locos went into consists and were assigned to trains. He said once Conrail happened, their motive power people got around to asking him why LV got so much more mileage out of its locos than Conrail was getting. He said the reason was that LV kept like locos with like in consists. Conrail, of course, didn't. I get the impression that many Alcos from Conrail constituents wound up in New Jersey and were MUed pretty much indiscriminately until the DeWitt rebuild program got going and the RS-3s went to Altoona for upgrade. I don't know if 214 was ever MUed with an RS-11, but on DCC, these work perfectly in a consist without any reprogramming.