Date: 01/14/05
Nostalgic PLA Equipment Move
Part 1 - The Eve
Author: espeeboy
Time to chime in with my photos
from last Saturday's run of the once in
a lifetime all PLA Museum equipment move from West Oakland to Niles
Canyon Railway Museum. Believe it or not but this will be part one of
seven total threads covering this equipment move (try condensing 800
photos into a few threads!). Took me a while to get through all of them
but I still think it is worth posting now a week later (lots of email
requests for these photos - thanks for bearing with me).
~~~
As you may know, for a few
years (decades?) the PLA (Pacific Locomotive
Association) has had various freight rolling stock, passenger
cars and a few locomotives sitting with a storage yard here in West
Oakland on former Oakland Army base grounds. Various indivduals who
work with the 1:1 scale model RR schtuff have saved these various
pieces of equipment from seeing the scrapper with the intentions of
seeing them put in a museum someday. Thanks to the PLA's Niles Canyon
Railway
Museum http://www.ncry.org/home.htm
moving ahead at a good pace with their own land and best of all private
right-of-way (former SP main between Niles Junction and Hearst), all of
this equipment finally had a more permanent place to go. Well of course
this is the easier said than done version of the story with having to
coordinate running a Museum "hospital train" over the U.P.. I'd still
like to hear more behind the scenes info on what it exactly took over
these last few years to get this move a reality but I'll leave that
open to any of you reading this "in the know" as some say.
Moving on now - on Thursday
01.06.05, the PLA in conjunction with the
Oakland Terminal Ry (OTR) assembled a seventeen car, five locomotive
museum equipment relocation train made of various pieces of rolling
stock from the 1920's on up through the 60's (how old is that woodie
GFEX/FGEX boxcar by the way?). The assembled train with good air hoses,
lubed and FRA inspected roller and friction bearing axles was assembled
together in the following train consist:
SPX5472 - restored Black Widow
EMD SD9/SD9E (1956)
WP713 - dead in consist but
operational EMD GP7 (1953)
SPX5623 - restored Black Widow
EMD GP9, ex-SP GP9E passenger "Torpedo"
(1955)
U.S. ARMY 1856 - dead in
consist Fairbanks Morse H12-44 (1953)
OTR101 - dead in consist
Oakland Terminal Ry's Baldwin DS-4-4-1000
(1948)
MILWXXXXX - Milwaukee 50'
steel boxcar (19XX)
UP904253 - Union Pacific
converted MOW baggage car (19XX)
SP693558 - Southern Pacific
Pacific Car & Foundry 50' boxcar (196X)
SP693772 - Southern Pacific
Pacific Car & Foundry 50' boxcar (196X)
EP&S139 - El Paso &
Southwestern Pullman 60' Observation
passenger car (1923)
USNXXXXX - Navy six-axle
flatcar (19XX)
SP100752 - Southern Pacific
50' boxcar (19XX)
PFEXXXXX - Pacific Fruit
Exchange 50' reefer (19XX)
ATSF149100 - Santa Fe 50'
steel boxcar (19XX)
SFRD11998 - Santa Fe 50' ice
Reefer (19XX)
GATX37070 - short 40' tankcar
(19??)
SF1861 - heavyweight passenger
car (19??)
SP5002 - Southern Pacific
combo baggage dorm (19XX)
ATSF505 - Santa Fe
Pullman-Standard 80' Dome Lounge passenger car
(1950)
SP6719 - Southern Pacific
Pacific Car & Foundry 60' Twin Door
Baggage Car (1960)
GFEX58412 - General Fruit
Exchange 50' woodside reefer (mistakenly
marked FGEX?)
SSW40 - Cotton Belt
Wide-Vision cupola caboose International Car &
Foundry (1963)
Ship And Travel Santa Fe - All The
Way!
That old six axle SP
baggage.
Rear part of the train
with the ATSF dome.
A nice ATSF heavyweight.
An old era high nose Caddy
meets some new era high cube doublestacks
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