Philly NRHS - Railfan Pictures of the Week

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The Philadelphia Chapter of the

National Railway Historical Society

Established in 1936

Railfan Pictures of the Week - 06/13/2006

Amtrak Wilmington Maintenance Shops Wilmington DE August 1993

The NMRA "Independence Junction" National Convention in Philadelphia offers many tours of prototype railroad facilities. One of those is a trip to Amtrak's Wilmington Shops in Wilmington DE. This former Pennsylvania Railroad shop was the home base of the GG-1 fleet as well as most of the other electric-powered equipment of the PRR, and is still used by Amtrak today.

Back in August of 1993, shop forces were working on the conversion of some of the ConnDOT SPV into coaches dubbed "Constitution Liners", here with undercarriages stripped of equipment and riding on shop trucks. During the tour, I remember being told that instead of sandblasting (and destroying) the Budd stainless steel bodies to clean them, a more gentle media made of ground up walnut shells was used.

Obviously not for interchange service, this little guy does not seem to have any markings at all, a boon to those fans of the famous Undecorated Railroad.

In the back were some of the original Budd Metroliners, including Pennsy-pinstiped Coach Snack Bar Car 860, which eventually wound up in the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania.

Although many were converted to cab control cars for use throughout the Amtrak system,the rest of these were scrapped, along with a few of the recently retired E60MA's, sometime in 2003.

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Last Updated June 13, 2006

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Website created June 12, 2002