“Fade to Pink” With its bright red and silver paint now faded, GCK 101 sits—stack capped—waiting on a tank car of kaolin slurry that will never come, at the shuttered Verso paper mill.
With the closure of the Verso (ex-New Page/MeadWestvaco/Westvaco/West Virginia Pulp & Paper) mill in 2019, Alco T6 GCK 101 took an early retirement (if you deem retirement after 61 years hard labor as “early”). Since April 2008, George’s Creek Railway used the T6 to perform contract switching for the mill. The mill closure brought to an end over 130 years of papermaking at the site.
The Alco T6 is a fairly rare model (only 57 built), and this is one of only a dozen or so survivors. This example was built for the Pennsylvania Railroad (as PRR 8427) in 1958.
