Lehigh Valley 126

On a brief visit to Hollidaysburg in late October, Kris and I stopped by the Everett Railroad yard where we found Everett’s former Lehigh Valley EMD switcher number 126 catch the midday sun.

This was among the prewar EMC switchers that Lehigh Valley sent back to EMD in the 1950s to be remanufactured into ‘new’ locomotives.

According to the Everett’s website, this locomotive was built as a NW1 in May 1938 and returned to EMD for remanufacture in 1956. Afterwards it was described as an SW9M. It served Conrail, and later a variety of owners. The Kiski Junction Railroad of Pittsburgh repainted the locomotive into Lehigh Valley colors prior to Everett acquiring it a few years ago.

During my researching an article on Philadelphia’s Silveliners for Classic Trains Magazine, I found an EMD ad from June 1958 that features Lehigh Valley’s 123 and 125, locomotives similarly remanufactured about the same time.

This was a coincidental find, as the ad appeared on the backside of the same page as the Silverliner article. I scanned the ad in two sections and then rejoined them to the best of my ability using EazyDraw and Lightroom.

The challenge of this exercise is that I was working from an old bound volume of Railway Age and this wasn’t conducive to scanning on a traditional flatbed scanner. Portions of the ad were hidden by the gatefold.

Incidentally, Lehigh Valley 124 that was rebuilt as part of the same program also survives and this works for the Landisville Railroad near Lancaster, Pa.

Tracking the Light Posts Everyday.