Hi,

Lots of posts about the grand dame of the Jersey Shore, the Blue Comet. As you may imagine, there is great interest in NJ to preserving what remains of the train... of course, not enough to stop NJ Transit's scrapping of at least one BC coach in the late 1980's.

In terms of preservation, and recreation, there have been many fallacies. The prime example being that since the Pacifics and the diner Giacobini are gone (the diner lasted into the 70's as a yard office in Jersey City after wreck damage), there can be no Blue Comet.

The truth is, the diner only served on some of the scheduled BC's, as generally more than one was scheduled each day. Also, the CNJ regularly filled out the train with standard "green" cars, especially in the later years. Camelback #592 at Baltimore today was a regular on the train, which often ran with power other than the Pacifics. Only the Pacifics were painted blue, however.

Today, the three observation cars survive. Two are available for sale: Biela in CLinton, NJ and Tempel in South Plainfield, NJ.

The NJ group URHS has two coaches: D'Arrest and Westphal. Obs Di Vico is in the hands of the Tri-State NRHS. Combine Encke is supposedly in posession of a NJ group, but I cannot confirm.

Since the Blue Comet was a coach-service, filling out a consist with replicated cars (using some of the other surviving CNJ cars of the same design as the BC cars)painted blue, or just in authenitc green, a late-era Blue Comet copuld be created quite easily in 2001... with a lot of cooperation, effort and a winning lottery ticket. Pretty cool.

In fact, of all the anthracite road steam-era name trains, only the Blue Comet may be recreated today in any form... unless we stretch the definition to include the PRR's Anthracite Express, which could be assembled in 2001.

Recreating the Black Diamond, Mountaineer, Williamsporter, Queen of the Valley or any of the Erie trains would require locomotives long gone... although at least one piece of rolling stock remains from each of these trains. Perhpas there is enough to tie a DL&W name consist behind #952.

It would be nice to see the CNJ camelback here in NJ with some BC cars, but until our state museum exists, she is in a very, very good home in Baltimore.

Take care,

Rob


Inlinebob@aol.com