By Railfan & Railroad Staff
The New York Central System Historical Society has launched a fundraiser to try and help move two rare electric locomotives to the Danbury Railway Museum in Connecticut.
The Danbury Railway Museum has owned NYC S-1 6000 and T-3a 278 since 2013 but has struggled to move them from their current location at an old power plant near Albany, N.Y. Last year, the locomotives were threatened by the scrapper’s torch, but at the last minute, the museum was able to drag the motors out of the way of a coming development. However, that development is continuing to be built and the locomotives will soon have to leave the area entirely.
In order to help raise the money for that move, the NYCSHS has kicked off a fundraiser for the Danbury group and will match any gift up to $5,000, for a total of $10,000. Donations can be made through the group’s website.
The S-1 was the only of its kind ever built and was the prototype that all of the NYC’s future electric locomotives were built on, including the T-3a. T-3a 278 is the sole survivor of 36 such locomotives built between 1913 and 1926. The T-3a electrics were among the Central’s most powerful and hauled everything from commuter trains to the 20th Century Limited. Once larger and more powerful locomotives were acquired, the S-motors found a new role as switchers working in the subterranean depths of Grand Central Terminal, with some surviving in active service until 1981. Only a handful of electric locomotives survived into the Penn Central era, replaced by dual-mode FL9s absorbed from the New Haven fleet. T-motor 278 found a new home assigned to the wire train in Sunnyside Yard in Queens (since the T-motor could draw power from the third rail in the tunnels while the overhead wire was repaired).
The odd non-revenue assignments proved to be the only way these historic electric locomotives were saved. The S-motor and T-motor were acquired by the Mohawk & Hudson Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society in the 1980s and given a cosmetic restoration and placed on display at the local fairgrounds. In 1988, they were hauled back to Grand Central Terminal to be used in a scene in the 1988 film “The House on Carroll Street,” starring Kelly McGillis and Jeff Daniels. After that, they were returned to M&H Chapter and moved to their present location in Glenmont. In the decades since the Chapter was no longer able to care for the increasingly isolated units located on private property. While they have been heavily vandalized over the years, they remain good candidates for cosmetic restoration.
