This Space for Rent

I don’t want to forget the OG PV&T electric locomotives!

PV&T paint schemes;  old (almost-PRR dark green) & new (big sky blue + white)
Template(s) drawn by Joshua Moldover, via The Railroad Paint Shop

There is no prototype that’s very much like the PV&T’s class A locomotive (the NYC Ra is close, but it was built over a decade later) so I collaged a fistful of Joshua Moldover’s templates (Alco S1, NYC T, Milw EF-1, Lima LS-1000, EMD F7, an open platform combine, and a PRR DD-1)into this mockup of the original GE class A locomotives that the PV&T purchased to electrify the northern Vermont subdivision & the west side of the Mount Cube ramp (the east side was the Fell incline, of course, and that electrification was still 15 years down the line.)

These are tiny locomotives; they are heavy interurban boxcabs (so if the PV&T electrification failed they could be sold to trolley lines and some of the expense could be recouped) and the design was not repeated when the PV&T & GE designed the class B, but 5 of them were still in service 72 years later (2 of those were assigned to the ex-LW&C, 2 were on the PVRT, and 201 had spent 45 years as a dedicated wire train locomotive after being taken out of mainline service in 1939.)

These locomotives have been extensively rebuilt several times in their lives; the original electrification was @ 2.4kvdc to be compatible with the Canadian Northern’s Montreal-area electrification, but the PV&T decided that a 3kvdc electrification was a better bet when the Green Mountain subdivision was wired, so they were rebuilt to handle that tension, and immediately after the second world war they had a major traction upgrade that took them from 750 HP to 1200 (1320 hourly.)

(edit: replaced the drawing with one that shows 201 & 204 in both the paint schemes these locomotives have worn.)