While a steady rain falls, a pair of Amtrak New Haven-Springfield Shuttles are tied down because the day's rain has washed out the mainline not far south of Springfield. Amtrak cab car 9635 was originally Penn Central Railroad Metroliner car 823, built by Budd in the late 1960s. By the late 1980s, several of these Metroliner cars were converted to unpowered cab cars for Amtrak San Diegans operating between Los Angeles and San Diego. Amtrak 9635 was one of these cars, which had their pantographs, traction motors and other equipment needed for them to operate as power cars removed. The scenery it traverses in Connecticut and Massachusetts is a little different than skirting the Pacific Ocean in southern California, and the weather is certainly harsher in the northeast, but fifty-some years on, these cars continue to earn their keep. To see this same cab car in California in 1992, 27 years earlier to the day, click HERE. (Springfield, Massachusetts – January 24, 2019)
