11-06-05 PHOTOS: Amtrak's 40th Anniversary Train

While currently out touring the west coast, last summer Amtrak's 40th Anniversary Train made a rather interesting weekend layover at the Perryville MARC station in Perryville, MD. As other commitments would cause me to miss its appearance in Philly, Baltimore or Washington DC, Perryville became my only option. The upside was that because Perryville was located on an in-between portion of the NEC I could actually get a little real railfanning in as well.

You can see the entire set of photos here or as usual just follow along to see a select few.

The display train consisted of a rebuilt P40, a de-powered F40PH driving trailer, a Heritage crew dorm, several heritage display cars and an Amfleet cafe store car. The train was outfitted nose to tail in Phase three paint. Here we see F40PH #406 coupled behind the P40 and in front of the dorm looking very slick in its brand new paint job.

Power was provided by stimulated P40 #822 which is one of the special set of Heritage painted diesels commemorating Amtrak's 40th anniversary.

The trainset was parked on track 4 at the Perry station where it could hang out all weekend without getting in anybody's way. The first MARC trains of the morning run deadhead from the storage yard at Martin State Airport. Here we are looking north along the NEC past the 4N pedestal signal at PERRY interlocking. If you look carefully you can see the northbound phase break indicators on the reverse of the southbound signal gantry.

Inside the display cars were all manner of Amtrak kitch from the last 40 years. My favourite was this set of Amfleet seats in their original 70's patterning. 

Also on display was a sampling of Amtrak locomotive horns. Before they standardized on the now omnipresent K5LA an Amtrak manager named Don Tead felt that their new E60 locomotives should have special sound and commissioned Nathan AirChime to come up with something a bit throatier than their standard P5 offering. The result was the unique PO1235 which replaced the standard A in the P5 model with one an octave lower resulting in an A major dominant 7th (A,C#,E,G,C#) chord which was very appropriate for a hulking brick of a locomotive that could smash its way through anything short of a GG-1. The PO1235 was unique to the E60's, but somehow one found its way onto an LIRR MP15.

Back outside I noticed that PERRY tower (and the old northbound Perryville Station platform) has been walled off by some new anti-terrorism fence probably due to commuters crossing the tracks to reach their cars in informal spaces on the other side.

Two trains were scheduled to pass during my visit, both regionals. The first was a southbound train headed by Amtrak AEM-7 #927.



And the second was a Northbound headed by #929 shown here coming off the Susquehanna River bridge and entering PERRY interlocking.

The 1950's Budd heritage cars were absolutely stunning showing what a little TCL can do for these marvels of American engineering. Shame that SEPTA allowed its Silverliner II's to go to rot :-(

Number 10020 was equipped with a cool outbound swing hanger truck design. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but it certainly looks effective.

Just a few hundred feet timetable west of the display train was the other part of PERRY interlocking where NS freight trains head off the Port Road and onto the NEC for points south to Baltimore and points north to Delmarva. Freight traffic is normally embargoed from the daylight hours so thins were pretty quiet here at the Port Road home signals. 

The catenary poles are still up on the 15mph wye track where GG-1s and E-44s used to pull freight trains onto a Main Line that wasn't just dedicated to ferrying to shuttling business folks and the political class too and from destinations on a de-industrialized Northeast. 

The catenary poles are still up on the 15mph wye track where GG-1s and E-44s used to pull freight trains onto a Main Line that wasn't just dedicated to ferrying to shuttling business folks and the political class too and from destinations on a de-industrialized Northeast. 

A fortunate cycle of lights allowed my freight and I to stay ahead of the freight until we reached the milepost 61 intermediate signals, which like most of the signals on the Philly sub are still B&O CPLs. Even better was that because the train was in the block the signals were actually lit up for once showing off a Clear indication. The mixed freight lead by CSX ES44DC #5375 arrived shortly thereafter splitting the CPLs with superb lighting.

Well I guess I'll end on a high note. I am currently processing the mountain of photos from my Seattle Trip so next week expect some more "classic" photos as filler.