GG1

The Best Railroad Locomotive of All Time (restored GG1 #4935 at Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania at Strasburg, PA. (Photo by Tom Hughes [Agent 44].)

Constant readers of this blog, assuming there are actually any, will know I consider the Pennsylvania Railroad GG1 electric locomotive the best railroad locomotive of all time.
The GG1 was classed that way because it’s actually two 4-6-0 wheel-sets hinged together under a common car-body.
The “G” is Pennsy’s 4-6-0 class; e.g. the G5 steam locomotive.
The reason is because I saw so many GG1s as a teenager, and it seemed every time I saw one it was doing 90-100 mph, a truly impressive sight.
The first time I saw one was 1959.
It was my first summer as a staff-member at Sandy Hill Boys Camp on Chesapeake Bay in northeastern Maryland.
It was my first day-off, probably a Sunday, the only days the camp could give us Counselors-in-Training (“C-I-T”).
I was 15, and I had hitchhiked all the way from camp to the tiny town of Northeast, MD, location of a small interlocking on Pennsy’s fabulous New York City-to-Washington D.C. electrified line, three to two tracks.
When I first started attending that camp as a camper at age-10 in 1954, the highway crossed Pennsy at grade, but by 1959 an overpass had been built.
Being a railfan, I gravitated toward that overpass, and set up on the embankment overlooking the tracks with the humble Kodak Hawkeye camera I had inherited from my father.
After a while a southbound GG1 passenger express blasted by, doing about 100 mph.

This is it; picture #1. (The Hawkeye leaked light; bottom-left.) (Photo by the so-called “old guy” with the Kodak Hawkeye.)

That’s my first GG1 picture; published above, and I was hooked. A GG1 at speed is an impressive sight.
It helps that the railroad was built to sustain such speeds.
It was still individual stick-rail in 33-foot sections, but the heaviest available at 143 pounds per yard.
As such it was about a foot high.
And track-maintainers had to make sure the track-joints didn’t sag, as they usually did with jointed rail.
A speeding train couldn’t be bouncing up-and-down at 100 mph.
And so began my effort to try to stop a 100 mph train with only 1/125th of a second.
It could be done, sort of.
Photograph an approaching train from trackside, the standard three-quarter view, and you could stop it.

The mighty G earned its way into the Pennsy roster.
The P5a 4-6-4 electric was being overwhelmed by increasing train weights.
Pennsy needed a more powerful electric locomotive, and built a 4-8-4 experimental, the R1 (#4800), an eight-drivered version of the six-drivered P5a.
As an afterthought they also built a GG1 experimental, #4899, soon to be renumbered #4800, patterned after the 4-6-6-4 electric wheel-arrangement pioneered by New York, New Haven & Hartford railroad (NYNH&H).
Both the R1 and GG1 were taken to a high-speed section of track near Claymont, DE.
Pennsy was expecting the R1 to succeed, but it was the GG1 that triumphed.
It tracked slightly better at high speed.
So Pennsy decided to get the GG1 in quantity, 139 units over nine years.
Pennsy had also begun a relationship with industrial designer Raymond Loewy about that time.
Loewy had designed trashcans for Pennsylvania Station in New York City.
Loewy set about trying to convince Pennsy to use a welded steel body-shell for the GG1 instead of the shell pieced together from tiny panels held together by rivets, the arrangement on the first G, now #4800 (“old Rivets”).
He also changed the end man-doors, so they wrapped around the headlight at the top.
Small input, but in so doing he made it the most gorgeous and visually impressive railroad locomotive ever.
Loewy came to Wilmington, DE, to see his masterpiece when the first G, #4840, was delivered.
He was impressed.
He also was at trackside once in northern New Jersey, and a GG1 passenger express flashed by at 100 mph.
Same reaction as me; like, WOW!
The GG1 was an impressive piece of equipment.
My paternal grandfather rode behind one once and was supremely impressed.
Probably rode the Congressional Limited, which at first was an all-Pullman extra-fare express train between New York City and Washington, D.C.
How Pullman that could be is debatable, since such a trip could be made in three hours — although the GG1 kept reducing that.
That’s not sleeping-accommodations (“Pullman”).
That’s parlor-cars and lounges, and perhaps dining-car service.
By the time my grandfather rode it, it had probably started using coaches — I can hardly see my grandfather paying extra fare.
Nevertheless, he was impressed. Within a short time the train was already up to 80.
We were returning north in our family’s ‘53 Chevy from Sandy Hill Boys Camp in 1954 on U.S. Route 40 near Elkton, MD, my first time as a camper. A southbound GG1 express flashed by on the parallel Pennsy.
It was fluted stainless-steel cars — probably a Florida train — but “must be the Congressional,” my grandfather said, with obvious awe and veneration in his voice.
In the late ‘60s, my grandparents moved into an apartment in Edgemoor, DE, overlooking the distant Pennsy electrified line to Washington.
We’d be in the kitchen, closed off from the outside, but heard a train roaring by far away. “Must be the Congressional,” he’d say.
About 1958 or 1959, my neighbor friend Bruce Stewart, also a railfan, and I rode to Philadelphia from Wilmington on a passenger-train, to visit some of the various railfan sites in Philadelphia, but mainly just to ride the train.
We decided to take the southbound Afternoon Congressional back to Wilmington. We’re at Pennsy’s 30th St. Station.

Southbound “Congo” at 30th St. Station, GG1 on the point. (Photo by the so-called “old guy” with the Kodak Hawkeye.)

Suddenly, here it comes! (See pik above), 17 cars, single GG1 on the point. (Regrettably there’s also a Baldwin switcher in the pik.)
We got on the train, and within three miles it was already up to 80 despite 17 cars.
A GG1 could withstand a short electrical overload, and generate 9,000 horsepower. —Just notch it out, and give her the juice.
12 385-horsepower electric traction motors are down in the power-trucks; two per drive-axle.
The G was extremely powerful, and overloaded those motors were putting out far more than 385 horsepower. —They were the same motors used in Pennsy’s self-powered “Owl-face” commuter cars.
Current to the overhead wire was 11,000-volt single-phase 25-cycle alternating-current (AC); the G was AC.
Hitchhiking atop the cars was guaranteed electrocution.
The pantograph (“pant-uh-GRAFF”) also bounced at least a foot or so off the wire, in which case a giant arc occurred, wire-to-pantograph.
Here it comes; lightning bolts flashing.
A railfan friend named “Buggs” Kipp (Leslie) and I attended a rainy football game of our high school against Newark High.
The bleachers paralleled the Pennsy New York-to-Washington main, and we spent the whole game in the top rearmost row watching GG1s flash by.
We weren’t paying attention to the game at all; and it was a championship game.
The last GG1 ran in 1983, 21 years after I graduated high school.
My note to my friend Kipp, for our 20-year high school reunion, was “when the last GG1 is retired, we’ll know we’re getting old.”
They lasted way longer than the average railroad locomotive. 1983 minus 1935 is almost 50 years. The average steam-locomotive lasted 30 years. A diesel-locomotive might last 15-20.
But best of all was the impression they left; incredible speed and power in a gorgeous Loewy-designed body.
A dramatic Cyclops eye.
And you couldn’t hear ‘em comin’.
Silent stealth machines — all-of-a-sudden they’re right on top of you; comin’ atcha at 100 mph.
My parents crossed that railroad with my younger brothers to see a just-built aircraft carrier floated down the parallel Delaware River.
I gave them the third degree.
“Crossing that railroad is courting certain death. It’s very active, and since it’s electric, ya don’t hear anything until it’s right on top of you.
That railroad is serious business. Ya carefully look both ways into the distance, before even considering walking across it. People get killed on that railroad.
I wouldn’t have crossed the kids across that railroad.”
I chased GG1s all over the system.

Three photos follow:

Boomin’-and-zoomin’ over the flyover. (Photo by the so-called “old guy” with the Kodak Hawkeye.)

—1) Is a northbound GG1 express rocketing over the Edgemoor Yard entrance north of Wilmington.
It’s a classic Pennsy flyover; that G will quickly be descending a roller-coaster downgrade.
By doing flyovers Pennsy avoided yard-entrance bottlenecks.
That downgrade also helped that train get up to 100 mph.

Boomin’ across the Susquehanna. (Photo by the so-called “old guy” with the Kodak Hawkeye.)

—2) Is a northbound GG1 express on the bridge over the Susquehanna River.
It’s doing 80 mph; the speed-limit on the bridge.
Somehow I hitchhiked all the way from camp down to Port Deposit, MD, where that bridge is.
I sat on a low concrete/stone wall at a VA center, unfortunately aimed into the sun (it’s afternoon).
Back then I wasn’t aware of lighting issues — now I’d probably cross the river, or show up in the morning.

STAND BACK! (Photo by the so-called “old guy” with the Kodak Hawkeye.)

—3) Is a result of my most dramatic encounter with a GG1.
In 1961 or ‘62 I went to Claymont station north of Wilmington on the old PRR electrified line, now Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.
There were four tracks, and I was used to seeing express passenger trains on the middle tracks. Commuter trains and freight usually ran the outside tracks.
So here I am arm hooked around a light-pole about eight feet from the outside track.
I hear a southbound train coming; sounds like a GG1 express.
But it was on the outside track!
It blasted by at about 100 mph, and almost sucked me into it.
Had I not had my arm hooked around that lightpole, I wouldn’t be here.

My March 1964 issue of Trains Magazine is still my favorite; it has a giant 17-page treatment of the GG1 by Frederick Westing.
In 1964 I was a sophomore in college, which means the magazine came in my college-mail lockbox — row upon row of cast brass lockboxes for every student.
I still have that magazine, and dragged it out again to reread.
Is it any wonder that magazine is still my favorite, despite almost 45 years of subscribing?
The Pennsy GG1 is the greatest railroad locomotive ever.
At the end of the article Mr. Westing describes cab-riding a single GG1 westbound into Harrisburg Station ahead of an express passenger-train.
On time of course.
Three E7 diesels are ahead waiting to back up and pull the train west. Harrisburg is the end of electrification.
“I don’t know why they fiddle with them diesels when they got a locomotive like this?” the engineer said.

“Tom Hughes” (“Agent-44”) is my brother-from-Delaware’s onliest son Tom. —Like me, he’s a railfan; which I’ve been all my life.

“Strasburg, PA” is a small rural town in southeastern Pennsylvania, in the Amish Country near Lancaster. It’s the location of Strasburg Railroad, a small tourist railroad. Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania is right across the highway — and mainly comprised of all the old steam-engines the Pennsylvania Railroad saved for posterity.

The Pennsylvania Railroad (“Pennsy”) is no longer in existence. It merged with New York Central Railroad in 1968 as Penn-Central, and that tanked in about eight years. “Pennsy” was once the largest railroad in the world.

“Sandy Hill” is the religious boys camp in northeastern Maryland I worked at 1959-‘61. I first attended there as a camper in 1954.

An “interlocking” is where crossover switches, or switches, connect adjacent tracks. Everything was interlocked so that switches couldn’t be thrown in conflict, or without a signal indication. “Interlockings” are now called “Control-Points;” and used to be switched by lineside towers. They can now be switched electronically from a central location.

RE: “‘Old guy........’” —My macho, blowhard brother-from-Boston, who is 13 years younger than me, calls me “the old guy” as a put-down (I also am the oldest).

“Stick-rail” is the common nomenclature for rail lengths bolted together to form a continuous railroad, usually 33 feet long per rail. More common today is welded rail, rail welded into quarter-mile lengths or more.

“1/125th of a second” was the fastest shutter-speed of my Hawkeye camera. It used a small iris shutter in front of the lens; interleafings of tiny panels that would retract when tripped, so that light would be emitted to the film for exposure. The time of this exposure was “1/125th of a second.”

“Claymont” is an old suburb north of Wilmington, DE; which the old Pennsy New York-to-Washington D.C. mainline skirts. The line is now Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor, and the station has been rebuilt. It is now a stop for railroad commuter-service, actually SouthEastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA), although in Delaware it’s Delaware Area Rapid Transit (“DART”) paying for the SEPTA service, which goes all the way south to Newark, DE, a suburb southwest of Wilmington on the Corridor.

“Pennsylvania Station” is the Pennsylvania Railroad’s station in New York City. Pennsy was the only railroad from the west to access Manhattan Island — by tunneling under the Hudson River. The station was torn down awhile ago, and Madison Square Garden built on the site. But the underground tracks still exist, so the station still exists as Amtrak’s New York station. (Amtrak is a government sponsored rail passenger service that took over rail passenger service from the independent railroads in 1970. It mostly operates trains over those independent railroads with its own equipment, but owns and operates the old Pennsylvania Railroad electrified line from Washington D.C. to New York City. They call it their “Northeast Corridor” service, and it has since been extended to Boston, over the old New York, New Haven & Hartford [NYNH&H] route, which was later included in Penn-Central.)

“Wilmington, DE” was the location of the main Pennsylvania Railroad shops for electric locomotives. It still is for Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.

“Pullman” was a company that ran special passenger cars for the railroads; usually sleeping-cars. Pullman Company, based in Chicago, built its own cars; and ran them in service. I.e. A passenger-train running Pullman equipment, wasn’t actually running the railroad’s own cars. The cars were “Pullmans,” and staffed by Pullman employees. Pullman equipment usually charged an extra fare; lounge-cars, or parlor-cars, or sleeping-cars, or dining-cars. Pullman cars were more than mere coach accommodation. (Pullman is gone.)

“Fluted stainless-steel cars” were really just passenger-cars with corrugated (“fluted”) stainless-steel sheathing. Although it was mainly a manufacture of the Budd Company (no longer in existence).

“30th St. Station” became the main Pennsy railroad-station in Philadelphia after Broad St. Terminal was closed. Unfortunately, it’s not on the New York-to-Chicago routing; it’s on the Washington D.C. line. Trains from New York to Chicago, have to pull into 30th St., and then be dragged out backwards.

“Congo” is the nickname for the Congressional Limited.

“‘Owl-face’ commuter cars” were the standard Pennsylvania Railroad MP-54 self-powered (electrical) commuter coach for years. They had two round porthole shaped windows in each end — a motorman would drive the car from behind the window. —The round windows made them look like owls. A train might be only one car; but could be two or more; each powering itself, but driven from the front (multiple-unit).

“Single-phase 25-cycle” meant the current alternated at 25 cycles per second — standard house AC is 60 cycle. “Single-phase” meant the current pulses were all one polarity; they didn’t alternate back-and-forth.

RE: “The G was AC........” —Many railroad electrifications were 660-volt direct-current (“DC”), usually delivered by a third-rail down low beside the tracks. Electric locomotives had a pickup shoe that rode underneath the third-rail. Many trolley electrifications had an overhead wire, followed by a wheel on a trolley-pole. This wire also delivered 660-volt direct-current — Pennsy did this at first, and at first their tunnels under the Hudson River were third-rail. But suppliers Westinghouse and General Electric made alternating-current electric motors feasible, and AC transferred better over long distances. So Pennsy switched to AC over overhead wire.

“Newark” is a small town southwest of Wilmington, DE; the location of the University of Delaware. The old Pennsy New York-to-Washington electrified line skirts it. It also is the location of two automotive assembly plants, served by the railroad.

“VA” is Veterans Administration.