Roster Shots: Port Jervis, New York

These two are part of a display at Port Jervis, New York. I thought it was part of a static display, but a reader has written in and corrected me. Apparently the E8 at least runs a couple of times a year.

Port Jervis is a great old railroad town located at the corner of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania on the banks of the Delaware River. It was once, according to what I have read, a key point along the old Erie.
The Erie locomotive pictured is E8A 833. It's a handsome piece and the paint job -- when I was there -- was gleaming. I like the early EMD design for its passenger locomotives, though I think it the earlier models like the E5 and E6 may have been the peak of the design as far as I am concerned. There was a little extra something on the nose that the example pictured above and her sisters is lacking.

 

This one is, of course, an RS-3, which is one of my favorite locomotives. When I was a kid in Canton Junction and an endless parade of GP-9s seemed to be at the head of every New Haven commuter train, the arrival of a single RS-3 with a couple of freight cars behind it was a treat. Of course the RS-3 I remember was painted orange with a black cab. (Some say it was actually red, but I remember it as orange.) So the RS-3 will always have a special place for me because the same way steam locomotives would transport some of the older guys back in time to the days of their youth, the RS-3 pulls that same time traveling train for me.