Conrail Symbol ABP-1 rolls northward though Flicksville, Pennsylvania on the former DL&W Bangor & Portland Division. This is the very first APB-1 and it represents a big change to the operating patterns of the B&P. Until the previous day, traffic for the B&P was delivered and picked up at Portland by trains on the Lackawanna Cutoff, the part of the former DL&W mainline between Port Morris, New Jersey, and Slateford Junction, Pennsylvania. Now, ABP-1 is the lifeblood for the B&P local, making a delivery from Allentown yard via a circuitous route that crosses the Delaware River into New Jersey at Phillipsburg and back into Pennsylvania at Martin’s Creek.
The Lackawanna Cutoff has been embargoed, severing the former Lackawanna main. The power from the last train is in Portland, waiting for APB-1 to take it to Allentown. Coal trains to fuel the Metropolitan Edison Company’s Portland Generating Station will now run over the B&P. Today, the B&P has few on-line customers outside of Martins Creek, as even the Portland Generating Station is gone. NS H76 still traverses the line from end-to-end, mainly as the eastern connection for the Delaware-Lackawanna.
Not
just heritage schemes, not just commemorative schemes - this album is devoted to some of the world's most interesting paint schemes, past or present.
