Mike Bednar/photos as noted
I was introduced to General Electric locomotives in mid-1965. The LV was in the market for more new power and the six-axle craze came to the “Lehigh.” In a cool move, both six-axle and four-axle units were “borrowed” from other railroads like the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton and the Pennsylvania Railroad. The DT&I provided three GP35’s that they had recently purchased from EMD. The PRR provided three-unit sets – EMD SD35’s, then GE U25C’s and finally, ALCO C628’s. The DT&I??? Sounds strange at first, but when you realize that both railroads were controlled by the Pennsy, it starts to makes sense. The LV soon found the EMD’s unsuitable. Both the DT&I and PRR demo sets were equipped with the multi-step electrical transition. This was not a good selling point.
After Delaware & Hudson took over the run-through service on April 1, 1976, the D&H was now just a “tenant” running on expanded trackage rights over Conrail. Allentown Yard became congested daily. On a cold day in January 1977, train CX-2, the “Canadian Expediter,” is stopped at the Adams Island road crossing while the crew waits for permission to enter the yard. There are two more trains behind this one! D&H 2308 was built in August 1968 as a member of the first order of U23B’s built by GE. — Kodachrome by Mike Bednar.
In addition, these diesel locomotives from General Motors were too expensive and EMD would only accept EMD’s as trade-in locomotives for credit. The GE U25C’s and the ALCO C628’s both performed well. ALCO would end up selling the Lehigh Valley seven brand new C628’s plus ten Monon returns. The LV was a major ALCO customer and ALCO would take anything in trade. The FA’s and FB’s were nearing their 15-year lifespans and would be used as trade-ins. The General Electric diesels were new to railroads and the LV couldn’t afford to experiment with them. The C420’s purchased from ALCO in 1964 were performing well, so the order went to ALCO. I only saw the PRR U25C’s once or twice pulling trains past my backyard. I don’t recall how they performed, but I’ll always remember that they were superior in SOUND! The “Blap-Blap-Blap” of the exhausts shook the windows of our house as they went by on westbound freights.
When Conrail took over on April 1, 1976, the Erie Lackawanna U25B’s were badly in need of maintenance. Conrail U25B #2590 (built as EL #2521) was the first U-Boat to show up wearing Conrail colors in Allentown on June 1, 1976. She is leading a U23B and an SD45, both still in full Penn Central paint, with train BJ-4 at Freemansburg, Pennsylvania, as the sprawling Bethlehem Steel Plant hums in the distance. — Kodachrome by Mike Bednar.
Reading purchased five GE U30C’s in 1967. These units didn’t venture into Allentown very often since the Reading found good use for them on the Catawissa Branch and on the Shamokin Division out of Newberry Junction. I was personally introduced to the big “U-Boats” when the Delaware & Hudson six-axle U30C’s and U33C’s showed up in the LV-D&H pool trains in 1972. The D&H U33C’s were well-liked but the U30C’s were considered “slippery.” The U30C’s were shipped to Mexico with the C628’s in 1978, but the U33C’s survived to the Guilford era. In 1974, the USRA ordered twelve U23B’s for the Lehigh Valley numbered 501-512. These were equipped with a new excitation system where only three prime mover engine speeds (RPM’s) and the excitation came through the generator… you had “idle” and then notches 1-4 were the same, with notch 5 essentially putting the engine into Run-8. No one liked that. You had no way of knowing how the engine was performing. When some of them came to the R&N, Jeff Seidel did away with this situation and ran them the old way where the speed changed with every notch.
In 2000, the R&N replaced some of their U-Boats with EMD SD38’s. On October 19, 2000, the 2004 picks up ex-Conrail #2785 (LV #509) at Coxton in order to interchange it back to Conrail. It was been refurbished and is destined for Pennsylvania Lime, Incorporated, at Annville, Pennsylvania. Just as we opened this article on General Electric locomotives with a photo of a diesel built by EMD for the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton, we close it out with another — RBMN #2004 (built by EMD as DT&I #254 in 1971) still wearing the colors of DT&I successor, Grand Trunk Western. — Photo by Mike Bednar.
With the Conrail birth in 1976, a variety of General Electric diesels started to show up frequently in the Allentown area. At that time, it was common for Conrail to assign four or five locomotives to a train in hopes that two would still be running when the train reached its destination…