Nostalgia & History > Penn Central FP7s at Wolcottville, Indiana Movie Footage

At the time, it seemed that most of Penn Central's FP7s were in service btw Grand Rapids, Michigan and Cincinatti, Ohio. This footage was taken at Wolcottville, Indiana where the PC Grand Rapids Branch crossed the N&W Gary District.

Believe it or not, the FP7 in PRR garb was taken in August 1972. It and the other FP7 are switching GR-1 that, if I recall correctly, ran between Fort Wayne, Indiana and Sturgis, Michigan, and usually came through Wolcottville in the evenings.  The southbound trains are GR-6 that usually came through in the mornings.

Note the semaphores at Wolcottvile were T-2 style with an electric motor behind the signal blades. The blade would drop back down to the stop positon when the train passed. In the footage with Jerry Spillner, the train had outlawed north of Wolcottville but someone forgot to turn the headlight back on. Jerry points at his eye to signal that,  but the engineer did not get it. (When Jerry got back in the tower he radioed the engineer to tell him.)

We would often visit our relatives in Indiana, but by this time my dad was on his next to last assignment before he retired form the military and we lived in Indiana, just east of Wolcottville in a rented farm house.

I regret the quality of the footage but it was the family movie camera with an automatic light meter that was on the fritz. And, of course, I shot into the sun too. I was all of 14 back then but should have known better.

Victor A. Baird
http://www.erstwhilepublications.com



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/15 14:47 by wabash2800.

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Really enjoyed the F Unit action.  Thanks for posting.
ALLEN

Can you tell why I like "covered wagons"? in fact, I was so enamored with the F units on the Penn Central Grand Rapids Branch, I didn't take any movies of the N&W that crossed at Wolcottville.

Victor A. Baird
http://www.erstwhilepublications.com



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/04/15 14:48 by wabash2800.

Thanks for filming and sharing this great footage!