Volunteers at the West Chester Railroad, featured in the December 2012 issue of Trains, received a 130-ton holiday gift last week, ex-Conrail GP-38 No. 7706. Exelon Corp., which used the locomotive to switch its Cromby Generating Station near Phoenixville, donated the unit.

The Geep, still wearing its faded Conrail blue, arrived in West Chester last week. No. 7706 was built by EMD in 1969 for the Penn Central and was sold to Exelon about 15 years ago. The power plant closed 18 months ago.

After hearing about the Cromby closure, West Chester Railroad volunteers approached Exelon, the current owner, about the possible donation of the locomotive last year.

“It was a fluke thing, I was bored one night looking at satellite photos of the Phoenixville area, saw something and said, ‘Hey, there’s an engine down there,’” Slifer said.

After some discussion, the locomotive reached its new home of West Chester in November, 18 months after the original inquiry.

According to Bill Swahl, director of operations for Exelon, the company was planning on getting rid of the locomotive until the West Chester Railroad contacted the company.

“We thought we were going to sell, people were offering to buy it and we thought that was the way we were going to go until Derek came by and asked about it,” Swahl said.

After seeing how the volunteers restored other locomotives, Swahl said Exelon wanted to donate it to help the community.

“I mean that’s something we always love to do, it’s something we want to be part of,” Swahl said.

I'm glad to see the preservation of second generation power starting to become more common. It is possible that this may be the only pure non-rebuilt GP38 ever preserved since rebuilding/upgrading seems to be the norm on these and the GP40s still in use by so many roads.

A recent Google aerial view of the plant reveals that a center-cab switcher (GE?) was also in the plant until recently. Anyone know what happened to it?