Not the best photo but UP 1979 is second out on MMTMT(Marshalltown Turn)as he enters Fairfax, IA. June 4, 2023 Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
When I started dating my wife, I knew she worked for Shell but had no idea what her job was other than she worked in Information Technology. When we would be out driving and passed trains she would be calling out the reporting marks on various tank cars and covered hoppers used to transport plastic pellets. I thought it was kind of weird, but hey, she was into trains. Turns out she maintained the programs used to track rail cars owned or leased by Shell, running jobs to update the data bases and making modifications or changes to the programs as necessary. She had a pretty good idea which cars were theirs but had little other knowledge about trains. I figured she needed educating about trains so I married her.
One our first date, I took my future wife to a nice trackside restaurant. She knew I was into trains, but didn't yet understand the hobby. Upon leaving the restauraunt, I went home via a different route that took us past an engine terminal in a seedy area of town. Unbeknownst to me, she was quietly terrified, wondering what she'd gotten herself into. As we continued on into a better neighborhood, she realized that all was well and that I really did just want to see the engine terminal.
Ah, looks like another from Harriman, TN on the eastern end of the TC, with the SOU main to the left. I waited near there looking in the opposite direction on 03/14/1990, but nothing ever came.
I returned to Harriman on 08/27/1990 in better weather and found these Tennessee Valley Authority geeps working at the Kingston power plant.
Thirty years ago there was a company that scrapped rail cars west of Rosenberg. The SP stored a lot of their old rolling stock destined to be broken up there on the old out-of-service Macaroni line between Beasley and Kendleton. I was checking out the collection one day when I found this rather new car tucked in amongst all the old beaters. No visible damage and no white line through the number like the rest of the lot. I often wondered if Conrail knew what happened to this car.
Its not in the Conrail Historical Society photo archives and doesn't come up in railroad picture archives.net so I think you have the only image of that one. Nice catch.
Kind of neat that CR and PC stenciled their boxcar classes on the frame above the rightmost truck. Russell's is a X58B. Here's an X72A at Montgomery, AL in the mid-1980s. It was built in 1973 for the PC.
I would like to think that when that string of junkers was pulled out and sent to the scrapper, that someone would have realized the error and routed it back into service.
I seem to recall some criminal activity during the Penn Central era, where a shortline repainted active PC cars and put them in service with the shortline. They figured as messed up as PC was, that they'd not notice. My memory is hazy, but I think the felony was eventually exposed.
Here is a a link http://www.trainweb.org/lsbc/theft.html with a little info on that, the outfit was the LSBC that was repainting or patching the cars. It is ironic that LSBC could be an acronym for Lets Steal Box Cars. Some folks may have went to jail for it eventually.
Now that you mention it.... I vaguely recall reading of such an incident. Back during the Per Diem era.
In reading that very brief "article", a couple of times, it would seem that LSBC did NOT steal anything. Apparently, mistakes at or by PC caused the entire issue.
The article to some, seems to say, "how could we steal what was given to us" This assumes many assumptions, Penn Central - PC, didn't intend to give any more than what was "via original agreement". LSBC took a liberal view of same. They were wrong. They were wrong in thinking they were right or even close to it, they were wrong in concept in the theory of boxcar "gifting", wrong in practice, wrong in implementation, and their decision to patch/re-mis label railcars, purely in a misleading, for profit, endeavor cannot, nor should not, be so simply diluted as a simple misunderstanding. It was far more devious and nefarious than that. But it was fwd thinking... In that they should have thought that going fwd with this shenanigan would result in trouble/litigation. LSBC would have been far better to charge PC storage fee's for storing their boxcars, rather than re-stencil them.
Well written @gjslsffan . There are folk who are guided by what's right and what's wrong, while others who are guided by what they can get away with. The LS&BC managers who hatched this scheme were clearly in the latter group.
