"LIRR 301" was one of 3 FL9s that spent about a half dozen
years on long island before being returned to sister MNCR and being
relegated to the scrap line. 301 spent most of it's time stored at
LIRRs morris Park shop while 300 and 302 did all the work.
SPVs and FL9s lined up in cramped rows of rusting bliss.
 A rare E10B, which spent
virtually all of it's working life on MNCR working deep under the
ground in the labyrinth we all know and love as Grand Central Terminal
A single solitary and slightly battered M3 car is parked, surrounded
by work equipment.
 SPV interiors
are stripped of seats, and occasional the air conditioning units located
in the ceilings at the end of each car.
EMD logo on the nose of FL9 2010.
 An FL9 Cab. Someone
"took a seat".
 ...and an
FL9 Engine Room.
Northbound MNCR train blasts on by under the charge of brand spanking
new P40.
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I had heard about it for years, seen it in photos, but never ever
been there myself... Heck, I didn't even know if it would be accessible..
but there we were, parked waiting for the rain to let up in the driveway
of said location without a soul in sight. The one car that came in
spotted me with the somewhat official looking scanner out the window
trying to get a fix on the local national weather service repeater
and bolted back out of the road. He musta thought I was someone waving
him to go away.
Slowly the rain turns to a drizzle, and then stops completely, but
by that point we're already walking through the SPV cars that are
parked in a long row here. The SPV or "self propelled vehicle"
was a failed experiment in mass transit history. A small batch of
under 20 of these cars were built in order to replace much, much older
RDC cars, which were used on short shuttle trains and the such. (The
main selling point of both was that they were self-powered and did
not require a separate more traditional locomotive to drag them around
- think of them as large buses on rails) While one might still find
some RDC cars running reliably in rail museums and tourist railways
around North America, you will not find any SPVs. Indeed the SPV came
to stand for 'seldom powered vehicle", as they often died on
the road and were generally so full of technical bugs that roughly
half ended up here, rusting into the dirt of the scrap yard, while
the others migrated to Connecticut where they were stripped of all
power assemblies and converted into what are essentially 'dummy' passengers
cars which require a locomotive to push them. Placed in service during
the mid 1980s, all were pulled from regular service by the mid 1990s.
The interiors of these cars are rather bleak. You've got smashed or
missing windows, holes in the floor, dirt and filth, with the occasional
leftover news paper dating back to their last passenger runs. The
exteriors are only coated with a small amount of truly shitty graffiti
that is about as whack as you can get.
Just next to this string of dead SPVs are the only 3 E10Bs class locomotives
still on the planet. Metro North inherited the E10B from the Niagara
Junction railway, (which was absorbed by conrail). In December 1980
the three units (4750, 4752, 4753) were overhauled, fitted 3-rail
shoes, and painted black with the MTA logo (and eventually repainted
into the silver/red/blue MN "beach ball" paint scheme).
They were built in the 1950s and served right up to the later 1990s
These are tiny engines which spent their days and nights working under
and within grand central terminal. They were replaced for a short
while by a leased NYCTA (subway) work train diesel, and MNCR's own
larger GP35 work diesels before ultimately being replaced by a batch
of 3 units custom built by brookville locomotive. (One might find
a detailed story on them here:
http://www.railwayage.com/oct00/switcher.html )
Finally, we come to the FL9s. Which represent the majority of the
locomotives that reside in this place of death and children's nightmares.
The FL9 is yet another custom-designed engine. It's primary feature
is it's ability to operate both off of traditional diesel fuel as
well as 3rd rail power. This is extra important, as in order to keep
the tunnels and grand central terminal from becoming one oversized
and non ventilated smoke stack, electric propulsion was needed. Before
the FL9, New York Central and the New Haven (railways that came before
MNCR) had to change the engines on the trains heading into tunnels
- which is a time consuming practice to say the least (15-20 minutes
is the rule). EMD's (the locomotive building end of General Motors)
answer to this problem was the FL9 model. Which at the flip of a switch
could go from gas powered to third rail powered. The first batch of
30 FL9s arrived on the property of the New haven in 1959, with another
30 to follow 2 years later. (Had the New Haven not been heading into
bankruptcy, another 20-60 FL9s might have been acquired). The New
Haven was the only railway to buy these unique locomotives, though
it soon became owned by Penn Central in 1969 (a merger of both NY
Central (the owners of grand central) and Pennsylvania railway), which
eventually gave way to 'conrail' in 1976 - which maintained freight
operations in the northeast, but handed over the money-losing commuter
service to a new NY state owned agency, 'metro north' (or 'mncr',
to the foamer set).
Some FL9s migrated off MNCR, however. Amtrak bought roughly a half
dozen for service into grand central (and later penn station), which
were all recently replaced by P40s. The Connecticut Dept. of Transportation
also bought a handful, which they had repainted into their original
New Haven paint scheme. MNCR's sister railway, The Long Island Rail
Road (operated by the same agency, the MTA which also runs NYC's subways)
used 3 of them for a short while to run with it's original experimental
set of new bi level cars. (These cars were phased out and replaced
by newer cars, with the FL9s returning to MNCR - this at least 2 of
them here in the train grave.) Unfortunately, LIRR ordered shitty
engines (the DM/DE class units) that have been prone to failure on
the road, and even occasional fires. These lemons, much like the SPVs,
will likely find themselves rusting into the rails long before their
intended useful lifespan has been met).
Through being handed off to several different owners, the engines
did their job and served well above and beyond the average 15 year
life cycle of a diesel locomotive. EMD's experiment in a 'duel powered'
locomotives proved successful enough for them to last more than double
their expected lifespan, and to eventually be replaced with modernized
engines (the P40) that have kept the same duel-mode design.
It is an indeed ironic museum collection that makes up the MNCR scrap
yard. We've got tiny yard engines which spent a career under the streets
of NYC, knowing every inch of track in the sprawling GCT complex intimately,
and we've to well designed engines that transported commuters with
class, style, and reliability laying parked next to cars half their
age, which never did anything for anyone outside prompting a lot of
high blood pressure and choice curse words as they died on the road.
And thus it flows in commuter rail land. Some units and cars are complete
success stories, others are dismal failures. Oddly, they all end up
at the same place, perhaps awaiting the same sad fate.
Click here to head on back to urban lens for *gasp* the third tour stop!!! |
