I am not the moderator and do not wish to comment on your question. I do try to be extra careful myself.
I do like the idea of extending the subject to include such ideas as where each of us were on Pearl Harbor, VE day, Roosevelt's death, and how about Amtrak Day One? 1 May 1971? Do I remember the correct date?
Also PRR and NYCentral into PC? Date in 1970?
I think the Pennsylvania and the New York Central merged in 1968, but not being a railfan at the time I wouldn't have had the trauma of the event seared in my memory.
Pennsy and NYC fans might tell you differently!
As a lifelong railfan, I remember very well the last evening of the Nickel Plate Road in 1964. My dad was ending his second-shift workday at Towmotor Corporation, which bordered the NKP on the property's north edge. I had gone to pick him up, and as I sat in my car in the parking lot I looked long at the tracks and felt a great sadness come over me. It seemed like a friend had died, and although someone else (N&W) would live in that friend's home, as it were, and take good care of it, the friend was gone, as was his/its spirit.
I remember watching the 20th Century Limited on it's penultimate westbound run in 1967. For some long-forgotten reason, that evening the Century was detoured through the Cleveland Union Terminal, instead of operating as usual along the lakefront as it bypassed the city. I was lucky enough to be in a Shaker Heights Rapid Transit PCC car that was running alongside the Century for the last mile or two, so I got to watch the train as it slowed for the maze of tracks and dwarf signals of the CUT. The motorman, as a favor to me, slowed down the PCC so we could see the world-famous drumhead on the train's last car. But as with the NKP's last evening, this penultimate one for the Century was as sad as it was exciting to see.
For most of my life as a railfan there have been way too many last or penultimate times.
NKP guy I remember watching the 20th Century Limited on it's penultimate westbound run in 1967. For some long-forgotten reason, that evening the Century was detoured through the Cleveland Union Terminal, instead of operating as usual along the lakefront as it bypassed the city. I was lucky enough to be in a Shaker Heights Rapid Transit PCC car that was running alongside the Century for the last mile or two, so I got to watch the train as it slowed for the maze of tracks and dwarf signals of the CUT. The motorman, as a favor to me, slowed down the PCC so we could see the world-famous drumhead on the train's last car. But as with the NKP's last evening, this penultimate one for the Century was as sad as it was exciting to see. For most of my life as a railfan there have been way too many last or penultimate times.
Wouldn't a near On Time Century have been going through Cleveland, in either direction in the 'wee hours' of the morning?
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACDWouldn't a near On Time Century have been going through Cleveland, in either direction in the 'wee hours' of the morning?
As usual, Balt, you're right. But since the Shaker Rapid Transit knocked off about 2 AM, it might indeed have been a wee hours event.
My hoodlum crowd of railfan buds were also known to ride Shaker's "greaser car" that came out to grease the overhead when the line was shut down overnight. In the days before cell phones that was a risky business as far as parents were concerned.
If I remember reading correctly, the Century had to divert on it's last run do to a major freight train derailment somewhere along the line, I don't remember where.
I also recall reading the Century ended up being nine hours late. A conductor on board said "She's dying, but she's dying hard."
I rode Penn Central the fist dsy of th merger. Klepper Marshall King had recently begun business as a firm and had not yet purcased the needed test equipment for one our first jobs. A friendly competitor, W. Ranger Farrell, Dobbs Ferry, a few minutes' uphll walk from the RR Sta., agreed on a loan. Overnight, at all overnight storage locatjons, "New York" had been painted out on the commuter equipment letterboards, and "Pennsylvania" subsitued. the 1000 and 1100 post WWII "Air-conditioned MUs" and the older cleristory-roof MUs.
I guess this was post-merger also. In Poughkeepsie, New York when I first lived there in 1979, I would take the RDC to Croton-Harmon to change to get to GCT. Above the windows of the RDC you could clearly see "New York Central" where it was ground away with a body grinder. But this was in the days of the Metro-North. On the ticket counter in the station, there was a hand-made sign that said New York Central surrounded by the words, Metro-North, Amtrak and Conrail.
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