Through roundabout reports from several other places, I found out that the Midwest Railway Preservation Society (you know them as the owners of GTW 4070) is going to be the recipient of a couple items of interest to PRR fanatics:

1) From their website:

PRR fans have IDed the cars as PRR "twin-unit" kitchen/diner 4610/4611.
CVTX 4410 (ex-AMTK 8801, exx-PC 4611, nee-PRR) Budd twin-unit diner kitchen - dorm.
CVTX 4411 - (ex-AMTK 8800, exx-PC 4610, nee-PRR) Budd twin-unit diner table car.
The plans are for Amtrak certification and mainline charter work.

MRHF's Facebook page is also reporting that four EMD E8A locomotives, two ex-PRR and two ex-Illinois Central, will be transferred to their shops in Cleveland from their former storage location along Ohi-Rail in Minerva, Ohio along with three passenger/baggage cars used as parts storage for the E8's. These are the four ex-NJ Transit locos that very briefly saw service/storage on MARC and in Baltimore back in the 1990s before MARC acquired ex-BN/Metra E8's with 645 engines. Reports are that the four locos have suffered from copper theft, but are still potentially serviceable for mainline operation. (Whether this is simply a transfer of storage for Omni Midwest or whether MRHF will own them was left unclear in the FB posts.)

E8's are located in Minerva, Ohio, not Medina. Not trying to upset anyone, just getting correct info out there.

I hope the ex-IC's come home eventually.

Steve

Wow, how did Ed Ellis let those E-units get away?

He didn't. Neither did Bennett Levin. They're available when they want to meet the owners' sale price (kind of like the B&LE 643, the stuff near Staunton, Va., etc.). They all know one another or at least how to get a hold of one another.

Whether the asking price is too high, Larry's Truck & Electric offers better financing, someone is ticked off at someone else, or whatever, that's between the parties involved.

This new activity makes me wonder about the Midwest RPS's situation. First, I thought there was an issue with a partial collapse of the roundhouse they are in. Do they own it or does CSX? That leads to the second question: these days CSX is not exactly known for their ease of moving passenger cars to say nothing of steam locomotives. Assuming these dining cars, E units or their steam locomotive are returned to service. What is the realistic chance CSX will accept them for interchange. More importantly if CSX lets them leave would they be able to come back?

I can't speak for the rest of it, but from my experience "escorting/expediting" passenger cars on CSX years ago for several owners was that every "excuse" CSX used to negate movement would itself be negated by "Amtrak certification," which is the apparent goal of the double-diner and probably the E8's. In effect, "Amtrak certification" acts like a blanket "stamp of approval" that shows it doesn't have friction bearings, has modern couplers, etc. It's the "default" for CSX and NS (and I imagine the other Class 1's) with regards to accepting empty passenger equipment for movement, because in almost every case where it will happen in "real life" (not us, mind you), it'll be Amtrak or another passenger agency.

There are still problems that can arise--I remember a "row" in Blue Island over ditch lights broken by a C&NW bilevel's overhang during switching, and individual crews will sometimes use any excuse they can come up with not to touch something "nonstandard" and expensive-looking and leave it to some other shift. (I've mentioned, I think, a loud argument at 5 in the morning with a CSX crew, with a CSX bull finally telling the crew to "shut up and take the car the way he told you to, or I'm telling the yardmaster...")

The four E8s and three passenger cars (one Amtrak "shorty" baggage, one very long baggage, and one RPO, if I remember correctly) left Baltimore years ago to Minerva between four CSX diesels and a long cut of freight, so they were at least acceptable to CSX back then....

Is the PRR twin unit diner the one that had been stored near Georgetown Delaware?

Jason Midyette

I was just being facetious since it seems Ed Ellis is buying up operable and restorable E-units at a prodigious rate lately.

I'm honestly not sure. I've tried, unsuccessfully, over the last couple hours to scrounge up what info I had on what PRR twin-unit diners were where; it seems at least three pairs got to Amtrak. I don't even remember a set in Georgetown, Delaware. I have vague recollections of some "twin-diner" set being at the Maryland Midland while they were still in what I would call the passenger-car-storage days. One pair was supposedly in operation on or out of the Aberdeen, Carolina & Western a while back, but they were in fairly good condition, as I recall--maybe Amtrak-certified.

Finally found my notes from over a decade ago when I last saw aMTRAK 8800/8801 (spent a really hot, humid day cleaning trash out of the cars in August of 2001)

These do indeed seem to be the cars that John Birmingham/Boulder Scienbtific Co. had stored on the Delaware Coast line near Georgetown Delaware. The current Google Earth view shows the cars still there, at the end of a spur near the interswection of Sussex and Broadcreek Avenues. (technology can be fun sometimes) Of course, who knows how recent the google view is.

Jason Midyette