PC: [Fwd: GG-1 # 4800]

[Jerry Jordak <jer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

All,

I received the following email to the PCRRHS mailbox. I know some of you 
have pretty large slide collections, and was wondering if anyone might 
possibly have a slide to help this gentleman out. There's a pretty 
amusing story behind this locomotive and it's paint scheme as well.

Thanks,
-JWJ

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	GG-1 # 4800
From: 	J1025w -AT- aol.com


Jerry,
 
     Do you know if there are any pictures around of the GG-1 #4800, on 
its *maiden run* in 1976 wearing the bi-centennial colors?
     I was the fireman on that job. I don't recall the date. I 
also forget who the engineer was, maybe Ernie Galanogt. We were assigned 
to run a freight from Enola Yard to Waverly Yard. When we went over to 
the yard office at Enola, we were assigned to take the 4800 and another 
G coupled behind it. When we went to the ready track there was this 
GG-1- the 4800 all done up in red,white, and blue. It had just come out 
of the shop the day before. The paint was still tacky.  Everybody who 
saw us remarked that it looked like a circus engine.  All the way back 
to Waverly, wherever we stopped for train orders or to be 
switched -every railroader who came within talking distance of us asked 
us, "Where'd you get that curcus engine?" or "Are you pulling Barnum and 
Baily?"  It was the stars all over it that did it.
     We found out from a couple of hostlers back in Enola that the guys 
in the paint shop out there came up with the idea for the stars at the 
last minute, I think over the weekend. They were told to get that engine 
finished and get it out there before the fourth of July. Everybody else 
already had their bi-centennial engines out there- the E-L, the CNJ, the 
Reading, etc.  Supposedly the 4800 had the red and blue paint put on it, 
but they couldn't make up their minds about how to apply the white. 
Allegedly in the 11th hour, the paint shop forman thought of the stars 
and told his men to just paint them on.  They did it without any real 
planning, not knowing how it would turn out.
    It seemed rather amusing at the time the way they were applied, but 
now that I look back on it, the 4800 with that paint scheme became a 
classic and was well photographed. Now it is something to be admired and 
remembered.
    Most astonishing is- I don't know how, but people with cameras along 
the right-of- way seemed to know that that engine with that peint 
job was going to pass by on that day on that train at an 
approximate time. We were the engine crew on it and we didn't even know 
about the paint job until we walked over to the ready track and saw it. 
Even the crew dispatcher never said a word to us about it. The 
railroad must have put it in the newspapers or something -that it would 
be passing through these towns. We took the short cut up the Morrisville 
Branch.
   If there are any pictures in your archives of that engine on its 
maiden run with that paint scheme, see if there is a long haired kid 
sitting on the firemans side, wearing a traditional solid blue 
demin railroaders hat. That will be me. If such a picture exists, I 
would like to get a copy of it for my collection. Please let me know if 
you can help.
Thank You.
Joe Wirzbicki