SCRANTON, Pa — For the first time in more than four decades, an Alco PA locomotive has hauled a passenger train in the United States.
Genesee Valley Transportation’s Delaware-Lackawanna Railroad hosted an invitation-only excursion today (Friday, July 11, 2025) marking the completion of restoration on PA4 No. 190, the former Santa Fe and Delaware & Hudson locomotive repatriated from Mexico in 2000 and formerly owned by preservationist Doyle McCormack, who began the restoration work. The locomotive now wears Nickel Plate Road’s “Bluebird” scheme and the No. 190 because that was the favored railroad of his boyhood.
McCormack was on hand and spent time at the throttle as the locomotive led today’s trip from Scranton to Mount Pocono, Pa., and return on Delaware-Lackwanna’s former Delaware, Lackawanna & Western main line. GVT Chairman David Monte Verde has said passengers last rode behind PAs on this route in 1965. It is believed to be the first passenger movement of any kind behind PAs since No. 190 and its three brethren spent a year as leased power for Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority commuter trains, service that ended in September 1978.
As part of ceremonies on Friday, GVT officers presented McCormack with a replica Alco-GE builders plate. Bill Strein, GVT’s chief mechanical officer, was also recognized for the work he and his team had done in returning the locomotive to operation.
GVT announced acquisition of the locomotive for use on office-car trains and main line excursions in March 2023 [see “Genesee Valley Transportation acquires …,” Trains News Wire, March 2, 2023]. Company president Michael D. Thomas said then that it was “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to obtain the ‘Spirit of St. Louis’ of locomotives. … We are ecstatic that Doyle has entrusted us with the stewardship of his great gift to rail preservation.” The locomotive was moved to Scranton that year, where work began to complete its return to operating condition
The train for Friday’s trip included the PA, RS3 No. 4068 (in Delaware & Hudson paint), a power car, a former NJ Transit Comet coach, Pullman City of Lima, and business car No. 2. The trip included a stop at Tobyhanna, Pa., for a photo runby for those onboard, as well as the dozens of railfans chasing the train.
A similar trip is planned for Saturday (July 12).
No. 190 was completed by Alco in December 1948, going to Santa Fe as its No. 62L. It and three other Santa Fe PA1s were acquired by Delaware & Hudson along with some secondhand passenger cars in 1967 to upgrade the railroad’s New York-Albany-Montreal Laurentian and Montreal Limited. (Those trains operated on New York Central/Penn Central between Albany and New York’s Grand Central terminal, using NYC/PC power). Those trains were discontinued in 1971 with the launch of Amtrak, and the locomotives were traded in to General Electric.
But D&H President C. Bruce Sterzing reacquired the locomotives, which operated on occasional excursions until 1974. That year, New York State and Amtrak reached agreement to restore a daily New York-Albany-Montreal train, the Adirondack. D&H supplied the equipment; the state picked up the cost of refurbishing the passenger cars and the locomotives. The PAs went to Morrison-Knudsen in Boise, Idaho, for a rebuild, where their original Alco 244 prime movers were replaced with 251 engines for an upgrade to 2,400 hp. The completed rebuilds were designated as PA4s.
The D&H equipment was replaced by Amtrak’s Rohr Turboliners after a year, after which the PAs saw intermittent use in freight service until being stored in May 1977 following Sterzing’s departure from the railroad. They reemerged for their one-year stay on the MBTA, then were sold to an equipment dealer who found a home for them in Mexico. Two of the units were wrecked there by the early 1980s; the other two were retired and reportedly still exist at the National Museum of Mexican Railways in Puebla.
McCormack and the Smithsonian Institution’s Bill Withuhn worked for years to bring the damaged units back to the U.S. The locomotives were included in a cultural exchange agreement between Smithsonian and the government of Mexico signed in March 1999, leading to their shipment from the former Chihuahua Pacific shops in Sonora, Mexico, in October of that year. The two damaged locomotives — little more than shells — arrived in Albany, Ore., in April 2000, where they began the long road to restoration.
“People don’t understand my passion for this PA project because they don’t understand the history of it,” McCormack told Trains Magazine in 2000. “When I was a boy, my dad worked for the Nickel Plate, and the first diesel I ever rode on was PA 190. The Nickel Plate became my passion, and that’s why a fully functional Nickel Plate PA is going to rise again.”
By 2008, the shell of McCormack’s unit had largely been restored, and in 2014 it made an appearance at the North Carolina Transportation Museum’s “Streamliners at Spencer” event. McCormack continued work on the project until
The other repatriated PA4, the former Santa Fe No. 59L, is being restored at the Museum of the American Railroad in Frisco, Texas; a Facebook page tracks that project’s progress.
— Trains correspondent Scott A. Hartley contributed to this report.
What a ravishing rail beauty! Go dear PA4 No. 190, go!
Dr. Güntürk Üstün
Former D & H #17 & #19 are still south of the border in Mexico at separate museums the last time I heard many years ago.
I believe this locomotive was D & H #18 and the PA in Frisco, Texas was #16. #16 was the locomotive that was pulling The Adirondack I rode from Whitehall (New York) to Croton-Harmon in September of 1974.
Remember that this precious diesel locomotive built for AT&SF, became famous as D&H 18. The engine 18 and its three sisters didn’t become reputed until they were purchased by the Delaware & Hudson in the late 1960s. The locomotive’s last act in the U.S. before heading south to Mexico in 1978, was working in commuter service out of Boston.
Dr. Güntürk Üstün