Farewell to Budd Silverliner II EMU

[WMAveteran]

 The July 2010 edition of RAILFAN & RAILROAD listed a "Farewell to the Budd Silverliner II's (trip) sponsored by the Friends of the Philadelphia Trolleys" on October 24, 2010.  The trip costs $70 and leaves 30th Street Station at 10:00 AM and returns at 3:00 PM.  SEPTA is planning to retire these iconic EMU cars so the trip will tour several SEPTA routes.  Make checks payable to FTP, Inc. and send them to Harry Donahue, 103 Mulberry Court, Morgantown PA 19453.  Information email is FTP2799@comcast.net. 

[WMAveteran]

   On October 24, 2010 I drove to Philadelphia and took the trip. At first we rode on two Silverliner II cars (#269 with the PENNSYLVANIA letterboards and #9001, a READING car without letterboards). The trip left 30th Street Station a few minutes late but returned to 30th Street Station almost 3 hours late primarily because a CSX dispatcher left the train behind a red signal at West Trenton for more than two hours when there was a shift change and the CSX dispatchers did not share information. Fortunately we were on the ground around the station and not stuck in the train. SEPTA, on the other hand, performed flawlessly. At Wayne Junction #269 experienced an electrical failure so SEPTA dispatched two more Silverliner II cars to complete the trip (#252 and #9009) in just a few minutes. We had rail fans as both the conductor and the dispatcher so we completed the entire ambitious trip and they threw in extra stops and run-bys. At the Clifton-Aldan station they positioned the SEPTA train on the trestle over the Sharon Hill trolley route and the police stopped traffic so we could take photographs of the Silverliner II train and the Sharon Hill trolley below it. SEPTA rocks! The trip covered the lines to Elwyn, West Trenton and Chestnut Hill East. I have photographs but this site won't accept them (perhaps they are too large for the format). Let me know if anyone has any suggestions how I can post the photographs.

[Tristan]

I certainly can't explain why but if you email them to me, I'll check them out and see if I can get them posted, or you can try uploading them to a site like imageshack.us and posting the links here (the ones inside [ img ] tags).