1. Hallelujah! Yes, there's the birth of a certain Christ child to celebrate, but also, there's the publication of the first-ever Penn Central Railroad Historical Society calendar. I know what's going to be on my wall in the coming year. That, and the two Norfolk and Western Historical Society calendars for 2005. Hooray for calendar proliferation.

2. Living in Virginia can occasionally complicate finding Penn Central things, especially when there's a lack of local hobby shops. I had to be in the City of Richmond before I found a Penn Central boxcar, and I had to go over the border into North Carolina to find the next step in my ever-so-slight move towards having a model railroad collection: An Athearn HO-scale wide vision cabin painted and lettered for the Penn Central. The livery calls it an "N9", but the N9 series on the Penn Central (and later Conrail) were converted boxcars, so that's inaccurate. However, who cares? I'm not a rivet counter, and seven bucks for a caboose from one of my favorite fallen flags can't be passed up.

3. At the one local hobby shop I've got, I did manage to find a Norfolk Southern three-bay open hopper, complete with coal load. Now to find a Penn Central Alco C630 to pull this odd-looking train now assembled on a shelf over my computer. Er, those aren't cheap, are they?

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The Superintendent of the Cold Spring Shops has mentioned (in a pleasant sort of laid-back way) additional funding, ostensibly to expand his motive power and railcar inventories.

If you've got any money that's not on its way to Virginians for Jerry Kilgore, then send it to him. Alternatively, figure out what gauge he models and then donate plenty of black-and-white locomotives, jade green boxcars, or perhaps TopGons. (Tuscan red or dark green locomotive enamel would probably be a good back-up choice if you're looking to send electric locomotives.)

Tee hee. And here he thought he'd get funding for another section of the Olympian Hiawatha.

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01 December 1959: The modern merger era begins with the absorption of the Virginian Railway into the Norfolk and Western Railway. ¹

The Virginian spanned approximately 600 route miles in West Virginia and Virginia, with its western terminus at Deepwater Bridge connecting it to the New York Central, and its eastern terminus being the coal docks at Sewalls Point. The latter was, of course, in direct competition with the previously-established (and Pennsylvania Railroad-affiliated) Norfolk and Western. The Virginian, headquartered in Victoria, also had connections with the Chesapeake & Ohio, the Atlantic Coast Line, the Southern Railway, and the Seaboard Air Line; most of these connections were made in the central and eastern parts of Virginia.

The Virginian is notable for, among other things, its motive power choices. It was one of the railways that embraced the 2-8-4 Berkshire wheel arrangement, which it designated class "BA".² More interestingly, the Virginian strung catenary over its 134 route miles from Mullens, WV, to Roanoke. This allowed for three really interesting types of electric locomotives, some of which soldiered on into the 1980s.

The first, type EL-3A, consisted of three locomotives connected by drawbars (changeable to couplers for single-unit operation) and with each locomotive riding on a 1-B-B-1 wheel arrangement. A complete EL-3A had 7125 horsepower, a continuous tractive effort of 231,000 pounds, and weighed over 1.28 million pounds.

The nifty thing about them was the fact that they were siderod equipped, and thus were imposing monsters, toting the freakish look of a boxcab combined with some of the most visible moving parts on a steam locomotive. Imagine, if you will, a shoe box with a few windows cut in it. Stick a bunch of wheels (eight pairs, to be exact) under it and put a pantograph on top of the box. There, you've your basic boxcab electric locomotive. Now, walk over to the nearest large-scale steam locomotive. See the drive rods on the thing? (They're the big long pieces of metal connecting the driving wheels. Look in the middle of the wheels.) Take them off, and attach them your electric boxcab. Do this two more times, and you've got an EL-3A.

When you're done, add to it the ominous electrical hum that would have been emitted from one of these things at speed, and you've got a recipe for a fearsome looking monster purring downgrade with a load of coal, lurching out of the West Virginia mountains as if it were Dr. Frankenstein's latest creation.

The EL-3As entered service in 1925, and the last was retired by February 1960' none survive today.

The next nifty Virginian electric was the EL-2B, road numbers 125-128. This hulking beast looked approximately like a pair of Fairbanks-Morse car body diesels matched rear to rear, with a pantograph added. Born in the Erie, Pennsylvania shops of General Electric, these started arriving on the property in early 1948. They had 6800 horsepower, and weighed just over one million pounds. Geared for maximum tractive effort, these locomotives had a top speed of 50 MPH. As with the EL-3A, none of the EL-2Bs survive today.

The last Virginian electric was the EL-C, VGN road numbers 130-141. These were, approximately, the little brothers of the Pennsylvania Railroad's E44 electrics, and looked like a brick on wheels. (Somewhere, railroad employees actually referred to either the EL-C or the E44 as a 'brick'. Go figure.) These units were geared for 65MPH operation, weighed 394,000 pounds, and often were operated rear to rear. They arrived on the Virginian in late 1956 and early 1957; all would be sold to the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad in October 1963. They served on the New Haven until its forcible inclusion in the Penn Central Railroad as of early 1969. All would thus be around for eventual inclusion into Conrail in April 1976, and finished their lives when Conrail abandoned electrified freight operations.

Two survive, one in the Northeast and one at Roanoke's Virginia Museum of Transportation.

An excellent article on the Virginian Railway can be found here. more...

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