Producer: John Pechulis
Locations: Owego, Sayre, Binghamton
Timeframe: 1976-1977
Length: 68 minutes
Source: Dave Deyo
Continues the look at early Conrail. Volume 4 covers March 1976 to December 1977. Areas are, Southern New York and Northern Pennsylvania.
A single DVD-R. Main Chapter Menu and advance. No maps or any extras. Narration by Mike Bednar.
Fullscreen aspect ratio. Excellent restored 8mm film. Good train audio. Balanced soundtrack.
To the Trains… 👉
Begins just before merger on Lehigh Valley at Sayre Yard. Compare this to a seemingly Penn Central Sayre later in the show.
Immediately jumps to road freights at Owego, NY. Traditional caboose on the end each train. Good variety of freights at Owego. A Central Railroad Company of New Jersey logo SD leads this coal move. Mike dislikes Penn Central power and even their cabooses! 😕 They are fine with me. 😀
Norfolk and Western 1357/ 1726/ 562 on a D&H freight at Binghamton, New York. Not again. A guy from Ardmore. 🤮 Spare me!!
Top of Starrucca Viaduct. A Reading and Erie Lackawanna are on the point.
An EL lash-up and PC GP38 8081 are seen at an Owego meet.
Penn Central F7A 1772 leads ‘mixed junk’ at Binghamton, NY. For the rest of us, an interesting look at ‘anything that moves’ early Conrail lash-up. Reading Lines 5305, EL F7B, PC U-Boat 6556. One man’s junk…
An all General Electric revue. D&H 2301/ 2313/ 2303 ease past at Owego. Waverly is where? Grand Union.. never heard of it.
Delaware and Hudson Apollo crew change at Susquehanna. A good chunk of winter scenes. Note the former Reading locomotive.
Check out the ‘really good’ Lehigh Valley GP38. Really good? The LV did not have radio equipped locomotives. Valley employees had to buy individual walkie talkies to communicate. Look at the extended antenna of the engineer.
A surprising amount of Canadian National appears in 1977. An early adopter of the wide cab design. Here, CN 9495 leads to Port Jervis at Halstead.
In the believe it or not category. A Conrail crew derails this B&O gondola they were spotting on Endicott Siding. What to do? Uncouple and leave it! Former Erie Lackawanna switcher with a minimal reletter as CR 9213. Circa 1977.
Sharp viewers shall notice the cornucopia of cabooses! In 1976, bicentennial paint was everywhere. Seen from local tow trucks to Post Office stamps. The variety of the cabooses is just as interesting (if not more) than the locomotives. Not all cinematographers were consistently shooting these. Worth the price of admission.
Conrail’s Kaleidoscope Years Volume 4
The majority of action is at Owego, New York. Sayre, PA. and Binghamton, NY. have scenes. Waverly is in what state? Also has a ton of through freights. A bunch of small towns, but where are these places?
As for the narrative. There is too much complaining. How many times does a viewer need to hear about Penn Central junk? For example. There is no need to hammer his opinion. Ardmore again and again… Give those stale and tired comments a retirement. The older JPM shows were done much better.
Cinematography is excellent. Shot mainly in the old style. Head end lash-up, a few freight cars. Many of the cabooses are included. Stunning restoration on these films. Good train sounds.
Accurate to the time. Unpredictable locomotive combinations. Anything that ran does appear. A plethora of 70s locomotives from, Alco, GE and EMD.
Odd units can be anything from, BAR, CNW to Union Pacific. Canadian National plus Norfolk and Western are frequent enough. Left some surprises.
All in all. This is a well-filmed entry in the Conrail Kalideoscope series. Again, it really needs some maps to rate higher and a better narrative. Get it for the films.
Rating: 4 Stars
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