Photos are being circulated on Facebook of several passenger cars--or at least stuff used as passenger equipment at some point--meeting the scrapper's torches at Gettysburg,Pa. on the former Gettysburg Railroad operation (now Pioneer Rail's Gettysburg Railway).

By Christopher Brang:






According to Alex Haines, the equipment being scrapped includes:



Inside of the "HEP combine" by Alex Haines, " Looked like a set from a post-apocalyptic movie." "Not 480 though. Just 120/240 and they ran extension cords from car to car."

I've often wondered if that is/was the last open-side autorack car left.

Nick

Pretty sure it was the last open-side autorack coach left.

(Wondering what the FRA would have to say about that design these days...)

I am honestly surprised that the double deck car survived this long.
I wish there was a museum of bad tourist railroad ideas...

There is an open-sided triple decker autorack in St. Louis, so this was not the last. Are there any others around?

It's a shame to see it go. The open air car looks like one of the former CN later Auto Train Corp car carriers.

The generator looks like an Onan set. If saved it could be resold as there is alot of interest in them. Especially at www.smokstak.com

Robert

I remember taking an excursion on the Gettysburg RR in the mid 80s and riding on the top level of the double-decker converted auto rack. It didn't have a roof on it at that time. I thought it was a cool idea, but it was one rough-riding car. As I remember, the seats were from old school buses.

It is surprising in this day and age to see a CNJ Bethlehem Steel-built coach under the torch. I would think given the plethora of them still in service that a parting-out would bring more revenue than the old slice and dice.

Does anyone know the number of that car?

Sloan seemed to like school bus seats, I recall more than one car used them.

Of course the ultimate re use of bus parts was his galloping goose style railbus built but never approved for use on the Knox and Kane line

At the request of a prospective buyer I inspected the whole Gettysburg set-up right after the boiler failure.

What a collection of absolute junk !! How he got away running that equipment for so long is certainly a black eye for the local FRA guy, not to mention his judgment.

We're all darn lucky he didn't cause the whole tourist railroad industry to get shut down.

Ross Rowland

Not a CNJ coach. Former NYC coach.

As I recall, after the Cornell family departed Gettysburg, anything that could be shoved out of the yard was moved in a hospital train over (mostly) NS to the Middletown and Hummelstown Railroad. Anything left in Gettysburg was in too poor of condition to leave in this train. And that was 15 years ago - so this equipment has deteriorated since then. That was my recollection - if I am wrong please correct me.

Was that open car an auto rack, or was it converted from a boxcar?

I rode the open car about a year before the big accident, where they ran the 1278 without a fireman in the cab for an entire trip. I didn't return after that.

Chris.

Of the five cars at Gettysburg, only two were from the Cornell days - the bilevel open car and the ex-NYC four axle clerestory roof coach. We looked at the coach - I've seen worse - but in the end decided we have enough projects as it is.

- Alan Maples
Everett Railroad

Kind of a shame the NYC coach is being killed. There aren't too many of them around and they were as much a symbol of NYC passenger trains as P70s were for PRR trains.

But rusty old heavyweight cars need lots of resources.... Everett is doing wonderful work on the CNJ fleet they have (six cars now?).

Howard P.

Alan can elaborate, but don't forget that the Everett recently acquired that NYC coach (P&LE) that had been marooned at the P&LE station in Pittsburgh for a number of years.