Your Railroad Book Library

[Green_Elite_Cab]

A few new books to add-

"Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines: An Illustrated History of South Jersey's Jointly Owned Railroad"

"Amtrak Heritage: Passenger Trains in the East 1971-1977"

A few Railroad manuals as well-

NJ Transit Rail Operations ETT #4 January 17, 2000

I picked this up since I had a matching NORAC rule book, and Conrail Shared Assets ETTs for that time period. Early 2000 would probably be my next choice in modeling after the late 1970s, since enough the prototype here is also well represented by existing models.

- Conrail Atlantic Region ETT #1 April 27, 1980-

This is the next to last Atlantic Region timetable. Its not perfect (still trying to hit that spring/summer 1979 period!) but its still useful enough. It is helpful in that I now know that at some point, they restarted the Atlantic Region timetable numbers, probably in a manner similar to the Amtrak ETTs, which went from #3 to #1 again between 1978 and 1979.

-General Electric Maintenance Manual: Penn Central Cars 534-603, Heavy Maintenance Instructions Volumes 1 through 3-

These are three HUGE binders, that basically cover every inch of the Jersey Arrow II cars and their repair. Sadly most of it is not helpful for modeling, but it does answer some questions about the cars for those curious about the details.

-General Electric General Maitenance Manual for Conrail cars 1304-1483-

Similar to the three manuals above, but less extensive, covering the Arrow II cars. It does however include a larger copy of the Operators Manual, as well as several pages for training people about Semiconductors and other electrical parts.

I imagine this was a general manual used to help train people on the Arrow IIIs, where the above Arrow II manual was specific instructions for maitenance. Then again, both cars are very similar. I suspect the only significant differences (apart from minor external details and some door keys) is the use of SCRs in the Arrow IIIs instead of Ignitron tubes in the Arrow IIs to rectify the overhead AC power into DC for the traction motors and other accessories.

Curiously, this manual refers to them as "EL MU cars", referring to the Erie Lackawanna. These cars were indeed meant to run on the soon to be re-electrifed ex Lackawanna lines, but in the end, the Arrow IIIs became the prominent MUs used on the Ex PRR lines, with the Arrow IIs, Penn Central cars, ending up on the former EL lines instead.