Southern Pacific Switching Layout

[Green_Elite_Cab]

I'm thinking of getting a Proto2000 conrail gp-20, I know these were scrapped in the mid-80s, so I am thinking of modeling 1980.

How much PC stuff was left in 1980? I assume that they wanted to repaint everything fairly quickly but I am guessing there would still be some freight cars still left in their PC paint.

There were plenty. Just to give you an Idea, Conrail started in 1976 with 4,891 Locomotives, the largest fleet of any in the country. 79% of them were from Penn Central (PRR, NYC, and NH units, plus some bought new). This is 3,866 locomotives. By comparison, the next largest railroad after Conrail was Burlington Northern, with only 2,176. Thats a lot of Penn Central, and we haven't even touched the 1,025 locomotives from other railroads.

Repainting did not happen quickly, there were WAY to many other costs and troubles to contend with. Many locomotives were outdated and close to retirement to begin with. Other locomotives were leased by Conrail's predecessors. If Conrail felt that it would let the lease end soon, it did not waste the paint on those locomotives. On interesting example was former PC GP40 #3151. On this locomotive, instead of CR patches on the flanks, the simply painted out PENN CENTRAL. the CR patch on the ends was a weird stencil. This unit was going to reach the end of its 15 year lease in 1983 and Conrail didn't need any more GP40s (Conrail had a large fleet of these, plus a nearly equivalent number of brand new GP40-2s). Some locomotives ran with their conrail patches into the mid 80s, but this was increasingly rare after ~1983

I too have seen Penn Central marked freight cars in regular service. They're still around! I think the only need was for there to be some sort of reporting mark for Conrail on it somewhere.

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