A Picture Of Today's Conrail. CSX Train M421-26 was the right train at the right time crossing Conrail Shared Assets on Sunday, August 27, 2023 with CSXT 1976 (Conrail Heritage, ES44AC, GE) leading over the modern day version of the former "big railroad". At sunset, it is seen crossing the Point-No-Point camelback through truss bridge over the Passaic River from Kearny to Newark, New Jersey with the New York City skyline in the background. This bridge was opened in 1901 by the Pennsylvania Railroad as a freight bypass of its mainline and today serves Conrail Shared Assets trains. Projected to be competed in 2025, at a cost an estimated by Conrail officials as $212 million, it will not only provide a modern structure but also reduce the time for opening the bridge for marine traffic from over 5 hours to about 5 minutes. The Consolidated Rail Corporation was created on April 1, 1976 to bring together the passenger and freight service of 7 large railroad companies and their subsidiary corporations, and was ultimately privatized and purchased by CSX and Norfolk Southern in 1999, leaving the dual controlled Conrail Shared Assets to manage the sections kept separate to avoid giving one railroad an advantage in those areas. This locomotive is one of a series that CSX has started to release with a modern CSX painted cab and a "heritage" body, with the scheme of a predecessor railroad and numbered for the year that company began operating.
