And this hobby continues to maintain its standard as the most scandalous and dramatic hobby I've ever seen...

The Chessie cat is officially out of the bag: I received this press release from LSRM this morning:

Lake Shore Railway Society Receives Restored Vintage
General Electric Dash-7 Locomotive

CSX #5554 is restored as C&O #8272 and donated to Lake Shore Railway Historical Society

NORTH EAST, PENN. -- Lake Shore Railway Historical Society is pleased to announce it has received a donation of a restored Chesapeake & Ohio "Chessie Cat"-era locomotive, C&O #8272, courtesy of CSX Transportation, Inc.

The 1980 Erie-built General Electric B30-7 locomotive, CSX #5554 (retired in 2009), received cosmetic restoration and has been returned to its 'as-delivered' C&O “Chessie Cat” paint scheme by the talented craftspeople of the CSX railroad shops in Huntington, W.V. CSX has donated the renamed C&O locomotive #8272 to Lake Shore Railway Historical Society where it will become part of the museum's educational programming and display. At Lake Shore Railway Museum, operated by the Lake Shore Historical Society volunteers, C&O #8272 will join seven (7) other General Electric locomotives in the "Locomotives that Dad & Grandpa Built Collection."

Ray Grabowski, Jr., president of Lake Shore Railway Historical Society, said "It is amazing what the dedicated professionals at CSX’s Huntington shops have accomplished. On behalf of Lake Shore Railway Historical Society and our entire community, I want to thank everyone at CSX for this incredible gift, especially the skilled craft workers who contributed to make the donation happen."

CSX has strong ties to northwestern Pennsylvania where its predecessor railroads began operating more than 160 years ago. Today, CSX operates its former Conrail mainline between Buffalo, N.Y., and Cleveland, Ohio, past the Erie General Electric Transportation locomotive assembly plant where locomotive C&O #8272 was built. That same CSX mainline also passes the Lake Shore Railway Museum in the town of North East, Penn. CSX and its predecessor railroad companies have been long time customers of General Electric locomotive products.


General Electric Transportation of Erie, PA, and B&O Railroad Museum, Baltimore, Maryland, assisted the restoration of C&O #8272 by contributing historic paint records, logo/lettering information and paint chips. Plans to move C&O #8272 to Lake Shore Railway Museum have not yet been finalized.

CONTACT:
Ray Grabowski, Jr.
President
Lake Shore Railway Historical Society
31 Wall Street
North, East, PA 16428

Frankly this entire subject makes me sick. It seems to me that railroad management needs to get with the times and realize that yeah people talk. It used to be a guy went home from work or to the bar and chatted with his buddies "hey you should have seen what we did today" that was as far as it got.

Today everyone has a camera on their phone in their pocket. And the same thing happens. Guy takes a picture of what he did today and shows his buddies. Unfortunately aren't at the bar or the bowling alley or what have you so he puts it on facebook to show it off to his buddies.

Now his buddies like what they saw and one of them has a kid brother who is really into trains so he reposts the photo for him. Kid brother says wow and shows it to his buddies. and so on and so on.

Meanwhile the poor sap who was just showing his buddies what he does all day is responsible for a viral post. Some idiot manager who is still stuck in 1982 thinking gets his panties in a twist because the cat got out of the bag and his big reveal is ruined by them damn railfans. He then goes on a witch hunt to find the dirty stoolie who spilled the beans.

The worst part is the poor sap that took the picture has no fraking clue any of this crap happend cause remember he was just doing the modern equivalent to bragging at the bar. Now he is sitting on unpaid leave or worse yet fired and doesn't know why.


Scenario 2 railfans and cameras are everywhere if it moves in a railyard somebody saw it and photographed it. Unless you keep it under a box and move it at night with the lights off it gets out.


Get over it, this is today's society and it really does not matter that your precious press release is old news and got scooped.

Most major corporations in this day and age have rules against photography in the workplace... and if not specific to photography, then a generic rule that prohibits "unauthorized" employees from providing information to the public. There are some good reasons for this; photos can show OSHA and other safety violations, and the photos can later end up being used to the company's detriment in court, etc. The fact remains, these are the rules the employees agreed to work under; they have no business violating them.

This shouldn't be news to anyone, it dates back a long time, it was included in my employee handbook when I hired out with the Chicago Transit Authority back in '75, and it wasn't a new thing then.

Which reminds me of a humorous story from that time... When the "L" derailment at Wabash and Lake dropped four occupied "L" cars into the street, the TV stations just couldn't let the story go, even after all the casualties were removed and everyone went home, they kept filming the wrecked cars as a background for the talking heads. About 1:00 AM an antique crane truck could be seen creeping into the picture; it was the ironworkers delivering rigging for lifting the wreckage the next morning. The TV reporters were all over them... "Are you going to have any trouble lifting these cars...?"

"Nah," said one old timer, "We do dis all da time."

Excellent PR.

OK, now that this is more official....

There's a couple things that happened here that made this problematic. As Dennis said, most companies have a policy against posting workplace photos, CSX has theirs very clearly explained in the company ethics manual. So whether it was a coffee machine or a B30, they were after the source. It wasn't a railfan.

Second, right at this exact time is the worst possible time to be dealing with CSX about anything, let alone anything that has even the slightest possibility of being controversial, or that the company wants to control the PR information flow. If you have friends or associates working for CSX make sure you understand that the Harrison impact has resulted in at least 1,000 management-level job eliminations through attrition, retirement, or dismissal. It's a very unhappy time there. It's gone top to bottom, and some good people are shown the door that have had their entire career there and are good railroaders. I just checked in on one of my friends this morning, he's gone after 20 years and a senior management position - unbelievable to me. And I know the survivors are digging in, taking on extra work, watching over their shoulders. Preservation has a different meaning to them.

So I'm checking in on my CSX contacts and seeing what I can do to help THEM, those that have been good to me and my clients. In this project, they have also been good to us in the preservation community, or at least tried to. I'm pretty sure that at least 50% of the people responsible for this project are no longer there, either, not because of this but because of the corporate upheaval. It's been anything but SOP and normal, and will not likely settle down for a while; translation is don't just pick up the phone and ask for one yourself, if you can find someone to pick up a phone!

Let me tell you just how prevalent such behavior and thinking about photography is.

On the side, I write about the craft beer industry. I take photos for several beer publications from time to time. Even the Washington Post has used my photos once or twice.

I've been blocked many times from taking photos of a shelfload of beers or a display at a liquor store or a chain grocery store. I've had to get permission from the store's management, and prove to them who I was shooting the photo for--in effect, that I wasn't a competing store/distributor's agent or whatever (not that I can prove a negative). Some other places, on the other hand, welcome the chance to show off.

There are portions of larger breweries--Dogfish Head, Heavy Seas, and others--that I'm asked not to take photos in, in spite of the founders and top staff knowing me on a first-name basis.

I was in the basement keg cooler of one of the nation's biggest tap rooms after a major retrofit with new keg/beer line equipment, being shown about by the manager. Amazing piping, neatly arranged. I've been a regular for twenty years,and they all know me. They still said "No photos, please......." I'm still trying to figure out what was "secret" down there, and I know the business!

This is also an era when people, for either innocent or nefarious purposes, can edit, "Photoshop," or "selectively edit" a photo or video to make someone look bad. And the bigger the subject, the more incentive to make someone look bad for punitive intent or personal enrichment. And major railroads are about as big as they get. Any major company has a fiduciary responsibility to its owners to protect and reduce its potential exposure to such shenanigans.

It has arrived in Erie.

From LSRM Facebook page: