Penn Central caboose. Indianapolis Indiana. May 1975.

I found this historic mid 1970's era photograph from the former Penn Central Railroad at my Link page Fallen Flags.Org, located to the right of your computer screen at http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/

I grew up on the near southwest side of Chicago Illinois during the 1960's and 70's era. One of the railroads I remember from that era that operated on the southside of Chicago, was the former Penn Central Railroad.

Although Penn Centrals locomotives were painted in a basic plain black "Dip Job" color scheme with white markings, for some odd reason or another...some of the freight cars and thier cabooses were painted in a nice jade green color scheme, like in the example shown here.

The Penn Central was created from the 1968 merger of the New York Central, and the Pennsylvania Railroads, who were both quite financially troubled by the 1960's. In the year of 1969, the former New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad joined the Penn Central through merger.

By 1970, the Penn Central was bankrupt. This large northeastern United States railroad lived on borrowed time and borrowed funds, until the U.S Govorment under President Gerald R. Ford created Conrail in 1976, by bailing out six bankrupt northeastern U.S railroads.

This photograph was taken by railfan photographer Gary Stubben in May of 1975 at Indianapolis Indiana.