PRR Time Warp

PRR Time Warp

This Pennsylvania Railroad heavyweight parlor car is leaving
Baltimore’s Pennsylvania Station in the direction of New York.

She’s been modified for head-end all-electric power, so she can
tag along on modern Amtrak trains. But she remembers earlier
times when she’d be part of 20 car long Tuscan Red PRR consists,
behind such legendary power as the GG-1 electric locomotive. (*)
Heck, she can even recall being pulled by huffing, puffing K-4
Pennsy steam locomotives.

The station looks vaguely familiar to her, although she remembers
passengers getting out of automobiles sporting more chrome, with
names like Hudson, Packard, DeSoto…
Pullman conductors…
and passengers actually dressing up to travel.

Now, she’s just a nostalgic “curiosity,” but that’s OK, because people
still pay to ride in her plush seats and look out her back windows at
the speedily receding landscape. She misses the rhythmic
“clickety-clack,” but she knows welded rail is the new way to roll.

But what about those weird rounded “Amfleet” and “AmCafe” cars
she’s tacked on to like some sort of nostalgic afterthought? I mean,
when she was young, cars had real names…trains had
names like “The Congressional”…"The Embassy"..."The Murray Hill"...

And she was a proud part of The Standard Railroad of the World.

Well, it beats being scrapped and turning up as a beer can, does it not?

© Steve Ember
(*) http://www.fotocommunity.com/photo/the-mighty-g-steve-ember/23763527