Conrail Passenger Trains?

[MaverickLeader]

WHATTT???? I never knew Conrail ran passenger trains in 1976-1983. Gives me an idea for some people to make them in TS12!

 

[cascaderailroad]

As far as I know CR only had the "Green Weenie" business inspection train for executives.

 

[prre6]

It looks like they had some NYC-style heavyweights as coaches.

Fred

 

[RRSignal]

They ran lots of passenger trains. All northeastern commuter service, AFAIK, was run by Conrail before 1981, including SEPTA, NJT, MARC, MBTA, and Metro-North. The Northeast Rail Service Act of that year allowed CR to get rid of it's commuter services (most, if not nearly all, passenger service operates at a loss - usually a severe loss) and CR became a freight-only road. Obviously, before CR, various agencies ran the commuter service and in some cases, like SEPTA, the agency was around as a management entity before they actually took physical ownership of their respective railroad.

 

[cascaderailroad]

I remember GG1's lettered CR, and they were mostly used for freight trains and sometimes CR locos were used to power Slamtrak passenger trains ... but I don't seem to remember anything but PC passenger ... then came Shamtrak ... but I never saw a CR Passenger train.

 

[SD45T-2]

They did run some commuter services.

 

[JCitron]

They did run some commuter services.

Exactly. Prior to the Boston & Maine (BM) becoming the sole operator in the Boston area for the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA), Conrail handled the commuter services for the former New Haven and Boston and Albany (NH, NYC, PC) lines.

After about the blizzard of '78 the process started with transferring the operations over the BM and later Amtrak for the operation of this service.

In 1983 there was quite a mix of old Conrail passenger cars in commuter service. The B&M was suffering a shortage of cars and trains due to an increase in service and the age of their longtime old faithful Budd Liners, which by this time were close to 40-plus years old. It became quite an interesting sight to see the different long-lost fallen flags running in mixed passenger service on the old B&M northside lines.

I was lucky to have taken a train into Boston to do some holiday shopping during this time, and the train I took out of Boston had passenger cars from the old NYC and Boston and Albany along with former long distance cars from the New Haven. The cars were far more comfortable than the Messerschmidt and Pullman cars that followed later.


John