Re: PC: Helpers on the B&A, early PC era

["Charles J. French Jr." <PennCentral@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Dave,

The SD-45's made a believer out of me. This one day I headed east out  
of Selkirk, NY to Springfield, MA with a very heavy freight. We had  
three 6500 U28C engines, all of them working. To make a long story  
short, we stalled in East Chatham, only 30 miles east of Selkirk. The  
only reason was we had too much train. There happened to be a  
westbound freight nearing our location, it happened to be powered by  
three SD-45 engines. The dispatcher told us to swap power and we did.  
As we swapped power, I said to the westbound engineer, now what in  
hell difference are these three six packs going to do better than  
what I had, he shrugged and said, beats me? At the time, it was  
obvious we knew little about the SD-45's! After tying on and making a  
brake test, I started moving the train on the relatively steep grade.  
To my surprise, those SD-45's walked that train out of there like  
nothing. After that, we continued east and didn't even need a helper  
over the Berkshire mountain. To say the least, from that day forth, I  
never doubted what the SD-45's could do. As I mentioned earlier, the  
SD-45 became the engine of choice for our helpers over the Berkshire  
mountain for good reason, they cold shove like hell!

Chuck


On Feb 27, 2007, at 6:00 PM, zootowerprr -AT- webtv.net wrote:

> Thanks Chuck,
>
>       I met a guy who worked on the "Loco-Control" diesels on the  
> PRR to
> the merger. He told me he had to do a mountain of paperwork to get 2
> SD45s to the B&A early on in the merger. "The PRR guys in Harrisburg
> didn't want to see any SD40 or 45s on the Central side of the company"
> He did say the "Central Boys" on the B&A loved those SD45s.
>
>    Dave
>
>
>


Chuck

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