Re: PC: Re: PC passenger equipment conditions

[rastaff@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

From:          NYC4600 -AT- aol.com
Date:          Fri, 17 Jul 1998 23:15:49 EDT
To:            penn-central -AT- smellycat.com
Subject:       PC: Re: PC passenger equipment conditions
Reply-to:      penn-central -AT- smellycat.com

My remember getting into a New Haven painted black with the 
organge stripe at Washington, DC about 1970. The smell of mold 
was so bad in it that we moved to another car before the train began 
to fill up that did not smell. The train was about 5 coaches pulled 
by a GG-1 that still had its Keystone. 
Bob Stafford

 My father is a former Penn 
Central RR police officer.  He primarily worked in Penn Station and 
in the former PRR Sunnyside Yards (Queens County, NY).  He worked at 
these locations after the merger and until about 1971.  

He recalls riding PC trains between NY and Richmond several times as a RR cop.
Most of all though, he remembers walking through passenger equipment that were
used as Penn Central's long distance equipement stored at Sunnyside, in the
middle of the night with only a flash light, looking for homeless people
sleeping in these cars (and others that didn't belong there or in the yard)
that people were paying money to ride in.  He remembers, as he walked through
some of the sleepers being stored there, smelling the most disgusting smells
on the face of the earth!  Most of the sleeping compartments in the sleeers
smelled musty, and in some, the floors were soggy and wet from leaks in rooves
of cars.  Most of these were former PRR and NH equipment. 

He never really got to see the cars interiors in daylight though, or the
interiors while the cars were in regular service.  All were at night, and
being stored in the yard.  Does anyone recall riding these PC sleepers and
coaches that would have been stored at Sunnyside in this 1969-1971 time frame?
I'd like to know if they were cleaned up or not for service, or if this was
how they were sent out.  Is this the condition they were used in?

Thanks.

John Weyhausen