I frequently visited my railfan cousins in central Maryland during my college years in the late 1970’s. Usually I would borrow my parents’ second car and drive, but several times, I took the rail route. Leaving Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in the morning on Conrail-operated SEPTA RDC service, I had plenty of time to get from Reading Terminal to 30th Street Station via subway . I would then explore 30th Street station in Philadelphia, as well as Washington Union Station, and still get to Brunswick on the late afternoon Amtrak train to Martinsburg, West Virginia.
In those days, a ticketed passenger could go down to the lower level platforms in 30th Street well ahead of the train’s arrival. I positioned myself as close to the outdoors as I could go, and was pleased to see this GG1-hauled train arrive a few tracks over. As it turned out, this train terminated here, so I believe that this was service from Harrisburg. The “baggage car” behind the big motor is equipped with a head end power generator to allow the GG1’s to pull Amtrak’s new Amfleet cars, which were not compatible with the big electric’s steam generators.
