Following up on yesterday’s post about the former Conrail SD50 working Norfolk Southern’s New Holland Branch, I’ve started searching my 1980s Conrail files looking for a photo of SD50 6753 at work.

Traditionally my system of organization was not oriented around locomotives, nor set up to find a particular engine by number. Typically, I filed photos by railroad, division, and location, usually grouped by era.

I have countless thousands of slides from the 1980s depicting Conrail all around the system. Some show locomotives, others focus on other elements of the railroad. These were organized by historic routes. I have boxes of Boston & Albany, New York Central Water Level Route, Erie Railroad, PRR, etc.

For the SD50 search, I’ve started with my Conrail-New York (state) box from 1987-1989 that largely covers the Water Level Route from about Utica, NY to roughly Westfield, NY, with various forays elsewhere. Mixed in with the Conrail photos are some of Delaware & Hudson, Norfolk Southern, and New York, Susquehanna & Western.

On March 10, 1989, I visited Dunkirk and photographed a parade of freights rolling along the Waterlevel Route. At 10:39am, I made a sequence of images of a westward mixed freight led by a Conrail SD50 using my Leica M2 loaded with on Kodachrome 25.

This was Conrail 6777, not 6753. But (hopefully) we’ll find the elusive locomotive eventually.

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