The local is slowly crossing Bethesda Ave on a sunny April day as it makes its way West toward Georgetown. Today’s turn has a single boxcar and caboose. The same loco is seen in another photo from four days later, previously posted to the blog! Note the “Radio …” text written within the blue of the Chessie logo on the nose. “Radio Equipped” graffiti, perhaps?
One CPAA boxcar would have been bound for Jack’s Roofing just passed River Road. This date was after Gallagher lumber had stopped shipping. Besides the heating plant, Jack’s Roofing and T.W.Perry were the only on-line customers remaining. each one got a car every two weeks.
The caboose is a Western Maryland Chessie unit that ran on the branch for a bit.
In 1982 the GP9’s that had run the branch through the seventies were supplanted with newer power: GP30’s, 38’s, 40’s and 40-2’s.
The separate Georgetown local was discontinued in 1982 in favor of consolidating with the “Met Way”, the local out to Gathersburg. 8 hours to Gathersburg and 4 hours doing the branch to Georgetown, is what I remember.
Christopher, thank you SO MUCH for all of this invaluable context and history! I had never seen/heard of CPAA so I had to look it up. “The CPAA reporting mark appeared in 1967 to cover U.S.-built cars in international service.” http://www.nakina.net/cp/cp.html
That is a great shot!! Gives a nice scope of the overall space and layout of that area back then, which is vastly more empty compared to today’s, lolz.
I may have asked this before, but what search terms or criteria do you use on eBay to dig these up? I’ve tried searching on there for pics before but never turn up anything from the GB, Idk if there’s certain terms or methods to use when searching, or if it’s just patience or luck of the draw?
Anyways keep on keeping on, glad to see the layout project is back up and running too, pun intended.