The Delaware and Hudson Railroad has had an interesting history, and things got a little squirrely for the little D&H in 1976. The D&H (to the best of my knowledge) was one of the few Northeastern Railroads not to declare bankruptcy in the early 1970's, and thus were not taken over and rolled into the formation of Conrail. Instead, the government entities sought to make the D&H a direct competitor to Conrail in the the northeast to drive down shipping prices and make Conrail price competitive. Maybe it worked, maybe it didn't, but changing the Delaware and Hudson from a regional bridge line (it's mainline ran from Montreal to Wilkes Barre prior to 1976) to a through carrier of freight from Buffalo to New York and Washington, D.C. was a big leap. Conrail had granted the little D&H it's Apollo and Mercury freight services (at the time one of the best money-making enterprises going) along with trackage rights over the former EL and Lehigh Valley mainlines.
Great for the D&H, but not so great for the people that had to haul the freight. The Apollo and Mercury trains were fast-moving Trailer over Freight Car (TOFC) units - not a lot of weight, but fast. At the time, the D&H assigned it's RS-36s to those trains, but those just weren't enough. Fortunately, Conrail also delivered some locomotive power - and maybe some of it's best and newest 4-axle units - 12 GP38's from the Lehigh Valley, 20 GP39-2's from the Reading, along with 25 aging C420's from the Lehigh and Hudson River and Lehigh Valley. The D&H also bought 20 brand new GP39-2's. Until 1972, the D&H favored Alco products, but Alco's time was up - other than the locomotives built by the Montreal Locomotive Works, the Alco designs and the spare parts had dried up.
The relatively new EMD GP38's and 39's went right into service, often with scant attention paid to renumbering or repainting in D&H blue and gray colors. When paint was applied, it often came off and revealed Lehigh Valley Cornell Red or Reading Green. Despite the paint, these locomotives were hugely important to running the newly assigned freight.
The Reading units were the last delivered to the once-mighty Reading Railroad in 1974, and sported the last of Reading's paint schemes - all green except for yellow accents, and a green and yellow chevron pattern across the front nose and rear end. I first saw this paint scheme on an Athearn model back in the early 2000's when I was just getting back into model railroading - I think on a GP40. Didn't buy it then, and I've been mulling over getting either the GP39 or 40 (the 40's were Conrail assets after '76). About 2 years ago I stumbled on an announcement that a GP39 with D&H patches would be coming out "soon!". Modeltrainstuff.com also put it on their website as "Coming Soon". Dutifully I waited. I'm thinking the global pandemic interrupted the normal delivery schedule, because they just became available, and using gift certificate money from my wife and Christmas funds from my mom and my in-laws, I picked up D&H 7412 (former Reading 3412) on Friday! Thanks everybody!
I don't think I've ever spent as much money on a locomotive, but this thing's a beaut. I did not opt for the sound option (would have been another $75), but it is DCC-ready, so I bought a decoder (it's a 21-pin - my first one of those). Fortunately (or unfortunately as it turned out), there is a removable portion of the roof that allows access to the decoder card and there is an analog module in there from the factory. At first I thought maybe it was DCC capable, but after many attempts to program it, I decided it was analog only. The next trick was removing the module - the 21 pins mean that you have to pull with a good deal of force to pop the module free. Unfortunately, I pulled too hard (but didn't know it). After installing the Soundtraxx decoder I could not get the loco to move at all. That's when a took 'er apart and found I'd pulled a wire off of the motor. I had to tear most of the locomotive apart to get access to the solder point and put Humpty Dumpty back together again. In the process I lost a screw - ended up cleaning up my whole desk and floor under my desk without finding it. Had a screw that was too long and cut that one off and inserted it, put Humpty all together and when moving, it had a really bad grinding noise. Guess why? That missing screw got pulled right into the motor magnet.... Didn't make that sound upon removal. Put Humpty back together again, and here's a picture.
Some spotting features - the white "7" is very realistic. The D&H only had white and blue numbers. The D&H block letters on the diamonds are also correct. I love the gold bell and the red fill tube as well as the snowplow. However, these locomotives were only this clean when they'd just left the factory. At some point I will have to weather this loco like the prototype photo above. Here's a shot of the back...
You'll note that the rear diamond retains much of the "Reading Lines" lettering. This unit does clash with the blue and gray lightning stripe motif of the other D&H locos in this consist, but it's true to reality.
If I get the gumption, I can always start looking for a Lehigh Valley GP38 or a Lehigh and Hudson C420. I think this does mean that I might retire my first D&H C628 - a Stewart Hobbies model, Road number 602. It's served me well, but in 1976, the D&H was getting ready to sell their C628's to Mexico.
January 2023: About a year after putting the GP39-2 into operation on the Apollo, I started hunting for a Lehigh Valley GP38-2, somewhere between road number 314 to 325. Ended up winning one on ebay, an Athearn unit produced early in the millenium, road number 324. These were the last units delivered to the Lehigh Valley prior to the formation of Conrail in 1972, and were the pride of the Valley in it's last years, Cornell Red with large yellow letters on the long hood, black and white chevrons on the front hood.
I love the look, and (fortunately), the D&h took their time about changing the paint scheme on this locomotive for quite a while in red. Here it is on D&H property sometime after Day 1 of Conrail with a former Reading GP39.
So, you'll note a few differences between the two pictures. The yellow Lehigh Valley has been painted out (sort of). The "LV" inside the diamond has been replaced with script D&H's (on both ends). The Number boards have been replaced (now black numbers on a field of white), and there is a "7" in front of the "324" on the side under the cab window. There's also a script D&H on the side in the middle of the big red patch.
Here's the unit I bought:
Items of note here: No snowplow, no MU hoses. Horns are the wrong color. Handrails aren't orange up to the first stanchions. If you opened it up you would discover that this is a DC unit and it has only a front headlight and it's incandescent. And that's all before the necessary changes that the D&H made. So, I developed a plan to make this into the unit pictured above:
1) Remove the DC portions of the design
2) Make this unit operable by my Digital Command Control system
3) Add LED lights for both the front and rear.
4) Change the number boards and add a "7" in front of the "324" on the cab
5) Paint out the "LEHIGH VALLEY"
6) Apply D&H logos on the front and rear diamonds
7) Add a Snowplow to the front and MU hoses to the front and rear.
8) Weather the whole unit to reflect something like the photo above
That's a pretty big list of things. Fortunately, I had a decoder on hand, a snowplow, and LEDs. Bought a set of LV and a set of D&H patch decals for this project. The locomotive arrived in my mailbox on Monday. Tore it all apart and started modifying it for DCC.
The Athearn design back then was "wireless" relying on hard connections between the trucks and either the chassis (low side) or the posts on the right-hand side for the high side which connect to the light and motor via a piece of folded spring steel. Removed that connector, isolated the bottom of the motor from the chassis, removed the light assembly, connected my decoder wiring harness to the motor contacts and the pickups from the trucks.
Decided to do something a little different with the LED lights - designed light boxes for the front and rear.
Decaled the snowplow and cut out the holes for the MU hoses. Mounted it after removing the steps on the sides of the front fascia.
I did do something cool on the number boards. I've never had much luck using small decal numbers for number boards nor have I had any luck with using dry transfers. I printed some out using trial and error to get the right size and font, and then printed onto stickers from a CD label kit which had good stickiness to the number boards. Here's the finished product after all of the changes:
And here it is leading the Apollo consist downgrade in the gorge.
And about 6 months later I decided that I needed a GP40-2 on the layout. The same green scheme as the GP39-2, but the GP40-2's went to Conrail...
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