Just prior to the much-anticipated arrival of C&O No. 8272, the North East museum’s CSX connection was temporarily embargoed by local track work — stranding the locomotive at Erie, Pa., just a dozen miles from its destination. Notified of the predicament, GE Transportation offered safe haven. The beautifully restored B30-7 could sit out the delay in the secure confines of its locomotive plant on the east side of Erie. The very plant that built the locomotive more than 37 years ago.
Aware of the historic significance and the personal and family connections between the brightly painted B30 and workers at the Erie plant, GE didn’t just stash the 8272 safely away. Instead, it was spotted in front of the Customer Innovation Center on the Erie campus. Employees were encouraged to stop by and have a look. And they did, by the dozens.
In a most fitting gesture, plans were made to bring the 8272 back onto the Building 10 erecting floor where it had been constructed in January 1980 and to invite any current Erie employees who had been on the job when the locomotive was built to join in a family portrait on the shop floor.
On June 9, more than 50 workers took up the invitation and filed alongside C&O 8272 for a family reunion photograph. It’s a tribute to the rich history of GE in Erie, and to the pride taken by generations of workers who’ve been building locomotives on the Building 10 floor for more than a century.
“At a quick estimate,” observed a GE worker as the group milled alongside the 8272, “there’s more than 2,000 years of experience right there.”
Beautiful engine. Those workers can be proud. I suppose it would cost more to maintain that color scheme than the current blue and grey at CSX, but it sure would be a great billboard for the railroad to adopt the design and eventually apply it to all of their engines. Chessie was pure inspiration.
Yea, why should anyone care that the journalism they pay for is done with a professional standard of care…
I’m sorry, but I can’t image having the time to care about the professional level of journalism on electronic blurbs I look at to escape my daily headaches. I don’t want to worry about spelling on this site because it’s entertainment to read of an antique locomotive being treated like a VIP at it’s home town. I couldn’t care less about punctuation, I quit caring about that the second I left the last day of high school English. (Which was my sophomore year because I took two years of drama to get out of spelling and grammar!)
A lot of experience in that picture, experience that is not easily replaced.
ERIE ZOO
Bradley, I totally agree. I get so tired of wannabe editors correcting the most minor of details.
Every single person in front of the locomotive has been with GE Transportation for AT LEAST 37 years. Impressive to say the least. GE must take care of its workers well for so many of them to stick around that long.
What a neat story. Too bad they didn’t just rebuild it mechanically while they had it.
I’m curious though, how do folks read a simple story that should put a smile on there face, yet instead feel obligated to grade it like an elementary writing assignment. Who cares?
A haven is a safe place. So saying “safe haven” is redundant.
Well done GE!
Tremendous idea, tremendous reporting, Greg!
The CSX shops are in Huntington not Huntingdon.
That is nice
The 30-7’s are one of my favorites. Great full circle story.
CSX needs to take the Chessie “C” and make it the C in “CSX!”