Pennsy Proud #14831

The Story

Here is a large long-retired Pennsylvania Railroad freight locomotive sitting outside the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum in Strasburg, PA. Once it roamed the rails on the huge PRR system, but today, it sits cold, still, and nearly landlocked. However, once in a great while, the yard switcher will shuffle them around the short museum yard tracks if needed for work or display purposes. Yes, it truly is the end of the line but at least it wasn’t turned into scrap metal like thousands of other steamers.

Several of this locomotive’s steam-powered brothers sit close by. Because there’s only so much room inside the museum’s expansive building, the more fragile old-fashioned wooden passenger cars and such take precedence for being under roof along with some important rare restored pieces.

Walking around the large museum yard, you will also see some diesel and examples of the famous PRR electrics. In fact, you will be passing through a lot of railroad history as well: the age of steam, electric railroading’s heyday, and the modern diesel era. The Pennsylvania Railroad was very active through all of it and often led the way in locomotive design and engineering too. You can see some of those electric locomotives in the left background of the picture.

Back in the day, the Pennsylvania Railroad had large fleets of locomotives just as all large major Class I railroads do even now. In the days of steam, the PRR built well over a thousand of their own steam locomotives in their Juniata Shops in Altoona, PA, with additional motive power built by Baldwin and others.

Location: Strasburg, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.