My OWN calendar

Norfolk Southern #1070, the Wabash heritage-unit. (Photo by Jack Hughes.)

—The July 2019 entry of MY calendar is Norfolk Southern #1070, the Wabash heritage-unit, an EMD SD70ACe.
It’s leading westbound stacker 23M at signal 263 in Summerhill, PA, on the old Pennsy main. The eastbound signals are raised to be visible over a nearby highway bridge. Unlike most they are always on.
Norfolk Southern has 20 heritage-units. They’re used in regular road service.
The heritage-units were painted the schemes of the many predecessors to Norfolk Southern. Probably most famous are #8102, the Pennsylvania Railroad heritage-unit, and #8100, the Nickel Plate heritage-unit.
Both are General Electric ES44ACs.
Other heritage-units are Virginian, Southern Railway, Reading, plus many others.
There’s even a Conrail heritage-unit, and Penn-Central.
Wabash was merged into Norfolk & Western in 1964 along with Nickel Plate. Norfolk Southern is the 1982 merger of Norfolk & Western and Southern Railway.
NS gained control of the old Pennsy line across PA when Conrail broke up and sold in 1999. Pennsy merged with arch-rival New York Central in 1968 to form Penn-Central, but that quickly went bankrupt.
That merger included New York, New Haven & Hartford (New Haven) which had costly commuter operations.
Conrail was a gumint solution to save northeast railroading. One, Lehigh Valley, was one of those northeast railroads. I walk LV’s abandoned Buffalo Extension with my dog. The county made it a rail-trail.
When I first came to Rochester in late 1966, that Buffalo Extension was still extant. Now it’s gone. All that’s left is the old grade and a few bridges here and there. 60+ mph, double-track; a fabulous railroad, but little sideline traffic. It was too rural; only a bridge-line.
There’s even a Lehigh Valley heritage-unit, General-Electric ES44AC #8104, painted Cornell red, as were many Valley diesels.
Portions of those predecessors exist, but now are Norfolk Southern. Wabash covered a lot of ground, but mainly had routes beginning in Ohio westward to the Mississippi river. Chicago, Detroit, and Kansas City were among its destinations. Wabash's major freight advantage was its direct line from Kansas City to Detroit, without going through St. Louis or Chicago.
Railfans keep track of the heritage-units. There even are websites. I’ve seen quite a few myself.
My brother in northern DE tells me about railfans congregating when a heritage-unit brings Bakken crude to his oil-refinery.
“Who are all these people with their cameras? Call Security!”
My brother tells his bosses they’re railfans, not terrorists.