Norfolk Southern Heritage Engines

RAILFAN GUIDES of the U.S.

Todd's Railfan Guide to
the NORFOLK SOUTHERN
HERITAGE ENGINES

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Wow! What can I say. In an unprecedented move, Norfolk Southern has decided to pay homage to many of it's predecessor railroads by painting 20 of their engines in heritage color paint schemes for NS's 30th Anniversary. The Union Pacific did the same a number of years ago with 7 of its engines. The years below are the year in which the railroad merged or otherwise became part of it's parent company. Many people questioned why, with all of the Penn Central and Conrail era railroads, why there was not one for the New Haven? Simple answer, the Norfolk Southern does not run on any of the New Haven lines, CSX does..... So I guess we need to work on CSX to do some heritage units :-). I guess we all heard (the rumor) that NS had to quickly put two leftover Conrail units in the paint shop so the heritage unit was the only Conrail engine running around on their system :-)?

The 20 Heritage Railroads include:
     Conrail
          the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western RR (1960>EL>1976)
          the Monongahela RR (1976)
          the Erie RR (1976)
          the Central RR of New Jersey (1976)
          the Reading RR (1976)
          the Lehigh Valley RR (1976)
          the Penn Central RR (1976)
               the New York Central RR (1968)
               the Pennsylvania RR (1968)
     the Southern Rwy
          the original Norfolk Southern Rwy (1974)
          the Central of Georgia RR (1963)
               the Savannah & Atlanta RR (1971)
          the Interstate RR (1960)
     the Norfolk and Western Rwy
          the Virginian (1959)
          the Wabash (1964)
          the Nickel Plate Road (1964)
          the Illinois Terminal RR (1981)

I would like to thank the PR folks at Norfolk Southern, especially Mr. Pidgeon and Sarah Cunningham for permission to re-use the material from their website,
some of the links are here:
http://www.nscorp.com/nscportal/nscorp/Media/images/heritage_images.html
http://www.nctrans.org/Events/NS-Heritage-Locomotives--A-Family-Portrait-July-3-.aspx

During this short trip to North Carolina, I also hit Henderson NC, Raleigh NC, South Richmond VA, the Marine Corps National Museum, and downtown Baltimore City to check on the CPL replacement, the only place left in the United States where a full CPL exists. If it had not been so bloomin hot, we would have also stopped in Charlotte and Roanoke :-(

Please note, my pictures here are not copyrighted, nor do they have my name on them. As many pictures as I post, it is just way too much trouble to put my name on them all, however, you will note that they are 150-250K JPEG's, and are not usable for much more than 3x5's, if that. If you want a larger file size for something, email me, the only thing I usually ask for is name credit.

Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg PA
May 8th, 2012

Thanks to Steve Panopoulos for the above pictures!

the July 4th, 2012 afternoon parade of NS Heritage Units
at the North Carolina Transportation Museum

The afternoon procession began around 2pm, and lasted about three hours. All of the units, except for three leftover from the morning parade and still at the roundhouse, were "off to stage left" and brought in one by one, and given two spins around on the turntable. After the 17 engines were brought in, the three already there were put on the turntable for display, with the last unit to do so being the original Norfolk Southern engine, just before they put the anniversary engine on the turntable.

The museum crowd on the 3rd was about twice as large (I heard around 3000), with the night numbers being around 200 on the 4th, and 500 on the 3rd. Considering the heat, most of us were well behaved except for one guy giving an older gentleman a ton of crap about getting in his view. Many railfans coming to the event had more than my 500 mile ride from Baltimore. Over my 40+ years of railfanning, I have to say this was probably one of if not the best event I have been to, and this includes events such as EMD's 50th and 75th birthdays, the 2009 Owosso Trainfest, and chasing 759 coming back from the Golden Spike Centennial in 1969.

Norfolk Southern (and the Museum) should be commended for the monumental undertaking the whole shebang took, because it not only required getting all of the units painted by the July deadline (they didn't think they were going to make it on the last few!), but it also took a massive logistics effort to get all 20 engines in one place at the same time! The pictures are in sequence of their display on the turntable. Which is your favorite?

Norfolk Western #8103

Nickel Plate #8100

Virginian #1069, one of the more anticipated units!

Wabash #1070

Illinois Terminal #1072

New York Central #1066

Pennsylvania #8102, another highly awaited unit

Penn Central #1073

Erie #1068

Lackawanna #1074

Central RR of NJ #1071

Reading #1067

Lehigh Valley #8104

Monongahela #8025

Conrail #8098

Savannah & Atlanta #1065

Southern #8099

Central of Georgia #8101

Interstate #8105

the original Norfolk Southern #8114

30th Birthday unit #1030

Not to be forgotten amongst all of the celebration was Amtrak's train on display,
and a big thanks to Steve who is trainmaster for this train and their 40th Anniversary Train

Andy Fletcher, artist for the 20 heritage paint schemes, his sketches of the units are below

Now this is how you cool off!

Tom Nemeth, editor and owner of Railpace Magazine

the July 4th Morning Parade

I missed some of the morning events, for I was over in Raleigh taking pictures of things and didn't leave there until a little after 7am, and the morning parade was supposed to have started around 8:15. The morning parade was for getting the trains away from the roundhouse and setting the engines up for the afternoon parade.

July 4th Night Shots

Night time shots were staged out in the field with the N&W and Southern units, and during the last ten minutes or so, they moved the two heritage units almost nose to nose. About halfway through the action back at the roundhouse, they decided to turn the headlights on, and then turned them off about 15 minutes before quitting time. The poor Amtrak train was neglected until myself and a friend started talking pictures of it, then all of a sudden, the place was mobbed :-)