A rare glimpse of some less oft seen museum pieces:
Early one morning back in October of 2019, I took a ride to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania for a visit. The Museum was not yet open, which gave me a chance to take a visual tour of equipment outdoors. Around the back of the Museum, I stumbled across these:
Most notably - PRR Class H10 2-8-0 #7688
This Consolidation was built in 1915 and represents one of Pennsy's Lima purchases. The locomotive sat on display tender first, nose to the wall, wedged between PRR 6755 and another piece of rolling stock. The Museum had moved it to the restoration shop for a cosmetic restoration. 4-8-2 No. 6755, 4-6-2 No. 3750, 2-8-2 No. 520 and 0-6-0 No. 1670 will all follow, in preparation for placement in a long planned roundhouse.
Next up counter-clockwise is the rarely seen green switcher - former Pennsylvania Power & Light No. 1, Holtwood, Pa, nee Pennsylvania Water & Power, Safe Harbor, Pa - a 1949 built 18 Ton Plymouth, which is operational and used to move some of the equipment, as needed.
Behind that is a PRR X29 box car, and behind and larger than the steam locomotive, is a 1966 built Pullman Standard “high cube” car. It passed to the New York Central’s successors Penn Central in 1968, and then to Conrail (CR 244039) in 1976. Conrail rebuilt and renumbered the car in 1986 and was later donated to the Museum in 2007.
