End of Service for VGN EL-2B Streamliners

[NW Mailing List]

Dave Phelps, Thank you for the very great history of the Rectifiers.  I very much enjoyed their life on the New Haven Railroad in their years around New Haven, CT.  Those early training assignments with GE must have been enjoyable-particularly being connected with the Erie Works. I went to Erie, Pa  8  years ago and drove all around the plant looking to see what ever was available.  I looked in the wrong place however and couldn't find the East Erie Commercial R.R.
Stewart F.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: NW Mailing List 
  To: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org 
  Sent: Sunday, October 21, 2012 12:27 PM
  Subject: Re: End of Service for VGN EL-2B Streamliners


  Stewart:

  You're thinking of what Vgn called the EL-C.  The EL-2b's were the two-unit (back to back) "streamliners."  They had 25 Hz to DC motor-generator sets to feed DC to their traction motors.

  The rectifiers went straight from N&W to the New Haven in the summer of 1963,  NH arranged for a service engineer from the GE New York office to come to New Haven and check them out.  As it happened, that summer was when I was doing my three-month field assignment as part of my 21-month rotating training assignments for what was then the Locomotive and Car Equipment Department of GE, and I had been assigned to the NY Office for that assignment (which was very convenient because we were living on Long Island at the time).  I was invited to come along for the inspection, which was a great experience.  The New Haven folks remarked that "GE had learned a lot about packaging the rectifier equipment since the EP-5's."

  Dave Phelps

  In a message dated 10/21/2012 9:11:57 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org writes:
    Hi Group, please forgive the ignorance of a Yankee member.- Were the VGN EL-2b's, the "hood style" rectifier locomotives delivered by General Electric to the VGN?  If so, some of them came to the New Haven Railroad, probably in the 1960's and probably by way of General Electric-Erie Works. They passed from the New Haven into Penn Central then into Conrail.  I'm a member of the Railroad Museum of New England and the museum owns one of the units in very faded Conrail blue and minus it's main transformer due to it's concentration of PCB's in the transformer oil. It will never run again, there's no main transformer and the 20 mile Naugatuck Railroad subsidiary of the museum has absolutely no centenary. 
    Stewart Fritts
      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: NW Mailing List 
      To: NW Mailing List 
      Sent: Monday, October 08, 2012 9:39 PM
      Subject: Re: End of Service for VGN EL-2B Streamliners


      Sorry I can't answer all your inquiries about the EL2b's. I do have a note, of which I do not remember the source, that says the EL2b's were scrapped at the Peck Iron 
      & Metal Co. in south Richmond. Maybe this will jog someone's memory with the details.

      Jeff Sanders


      From: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
      To: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org 
      Sent: Friday, October 5, 2012 1:59 PM
      Subject: End of Service for VGN EL-2B Streamliners


      I've seen several accounts of the end of the EL-2Bs which say they were taken out of service and scrapped between 1959 and 1962.  The early date is clearly incorrect as McClure and Plant show several pictures in their book of these motors in service into at least Oct. 1960.  Can anyone clear up the history of the final days of the EL-2Bs?  When were they actually taken out of service?  Were they stored for a while before disposal?  Were they sent back to General Electric or were they scrapped by some local company?  If so, who, when and where?  Many thanks for your help.

      Tom
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