OvermodIs the Jersey Central Heritage GP40P that uncommon to see?
I don't believe it is, although it migrates around the non-electrified NJT lines so it can show up anywhere. In fact, NJT's GP40's are still very much in evidence.
I don't remember if I've posted this before but here's a VERY good YouTube site of another North Jersey specialist.
https://www.youtube.com/c/LibertyRailfan
That was my favorite McDonald's from the era that I had to ride up River Edge Road on a bicycle (past the spot immortalized by Caren [the original 'Karen' btw] Turner). For the price of a couple of quarter-pounders -- which I recall as being 70¢ each in the early '70s -- I could watch the parade of then-new U34CHs coming out of North Hackensack. The engine would usually be positioned with the stack visible from inside the restaurant, and would usually be turning at the HEP 720rpm on 'high idle' fuel. When the conductor got the doors closed, the engineer often cranked the throttle open ASAP, and the engine would get lots of fuel and load as quickly as GE allowed -- this being only a couple of years into the EPA era. The throbbing would stay the same speed as the generator was loaded down, but would become deeper and deeper and more resonant, and laminar orange flame would lick up a few feet out of the stack. By the time the last of the lightweight cars had passed the crossing outside the McDonalds, the train was moving at what looked well above 30mph, and the exhaust was exactly what I imagined a fast steam locomotive would sound like -- I much later read a comment about the British Duke of Gloucester, 7100, with British Caprotti valves, "it sounds like a bloody Sulzer". You could hear the stack talk even after the rear of the cab car flirted off the the side of the curve to the north, and in fact there were things that it would echo off.
I should probably add that one of the clown-suited Vergara designs, I forget the model number, with the Polish engine blocks produces much the same aural dynamite, in different ways of course but just as interesting every time.
Is the Jersey Central Heritage GP40P that uncommon to see? She's still a fully working engine -- I think effectively even older than the BART equipment that would have been celebrating its 50th anniversary a couple of days ago -- and ought to be in regular circulation wherever the trainset coupled to her is scheduled to run.
I admit that I have usually seen the Pennsylvania tuscan-red electric any time I have to wait in the EZ-Pass service line in Newark (which is essentially every time I drive to New York in some different car), and that never grows old.
Could be worse, a good friend of mine was parked at the McDonalds in River Edge when the NJ Transit CNJ Heritage unit rolled past on the Pascack Valley Line and:
"Dammit! I didn't have a camera! Jeez!"
So I e-mailed him a link to a railfan video that caught it passing through Ridgewood, which he enjoyed!
That grade crossing in the first shot after turning south from Palisade avenue is where I caught a meet between a C424 or 425 and a U25B, in 1974... and me with no camera in the car!
In the olden days they'd park one of the SW or NW switchers right at the Palisade crossing, with that 567 chant all day long, free for the taking.
Do you get a little homesick for North Jersey railroading?
Looking for a little New Jersey Transit rail?
Well look no further! Here's that nice young Mister Chris with a selection of NJT vignettes! Very enjoyable too, I've been doing a little binge-watching myself. Check it out!
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLJ9n-kpEjTBnuRc8yi-CRQ/featured
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