The Conrail-painted GP10 Unit No. 7544 is located on the hub of the former Baltimore & Ohio Roundhouse of the Midwest Railway Conservation Society in Cleveland. In August we will be taking on the transport of tourists on the Cincinnati Scenic Railroad. (Cincinnati Scenic Railroad)
Lebanon, Ohio – The Electromotive Division’s blue-painted GP10 Road Switcher with a real Conrail sign will pull the Cincinnati Scenic Railway’s tourist train from August.
The unit was built in June 1954 as Illinois Central GP9 No. 9037 and subsequently converted to GP10 in the IC / Paducah Capital Overhaul Program in Paducah, Kentucky, and introduced as ICG No. 8008 in 1974. According to Reikamer Jr., President of Cincinnati Scenic, the Cincinnati Scenic Railway subsequently acquired a unit from the museum.
The mechanical work was performed at the Silcot Railway facility in Worthington, Ohio and included work on new main generators, new injectors, traction motors, and minor repairs. The painting was carried out by the Midwest Railway Conservation Society at the former Baltimore & Ohio Roundhouse facility in Cleveland.
CSR Chief Mechanical Officer Scott Jarrett and the Conrail Historical Society have worked to recreate the image of the Conrail GP10. It’s painted as Conrail 7544, a number that was never used on the Conrail GP10 list.
“The locomotive itself is not historic in the Cincinnati area, but the color scheme was chosen to represent a scene that was common in the area in the 1980s,” says Kammer.
Conrail served both short and high hood GP10s, but the low nose 7544 is different from Conrail’s raw hood unit with nose mount headlights which was not a feature of the Conrail unit.
Conrail owns 75 GP10s and has been upgraded from GP9 in Pennsylvania and New York Central in three locations. 52 units (CR 7545-7597) in the Purdue Shop in Illinois Central Gulf between 1976 and 1979. Six from Precision National Corp. in Mount Vernon, Illinois, 1978 (CR 7530-31, 7533-7535 and 7537). 17 (CR 7513-7529) to Morrison-Knusen of Boise, Idaho, 1978-79.
Conrail left the GP10 fleet between 1995 and 1997. Today, many work on short routes, regions and industrial railways.
The two best-known locomotives painted on Conrail are still EMD GP30 No. 2233 (formerly PRR / Pennsylvania Railroad / Conrail GP30 with the same company number) in the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum and Norfolk Southern General Electric. The ES44AC Unit No. 8098 is one of NS’s traditional locomotives that have been painted for the lines of their predecessors.
The Cincinnati Scenic Railway is a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization that operates a 12-mile tourist train on Lebanon’s Mason Monroe Railroad in southwest Ohio. CSR also runs the Ohio Railroad Experience. The Ohio Railroad Experience uses Indiana & Ohio Railroad’s tracking rights to travel all day on various routes in Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan during the spring and fall.
The railroad has three other EMD products waiting to be repainted or rebuilt. All GP30s have numbers 901 and 902 made from nickel plates and system numbers 6955 from Baltimore & Ohio / Chessy.
Comments are closed.