| Reading Company 621 is a GP7, constructed as part of an order of sixteen units ordered from EMD by the railroad in the spring of 1953. This would be the largest order of these units acquired, the total number of GP7s operated being forty four. Number 621 came equipped with dynamic braking for freight service and served throughout the RDG system that stretched through Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and a small part of Delaware. Unlike many of its sister units, the 621 would never make it to Conrail, having been sold off to Emmons controlled shortline Maryland & Pennsylvania a month before the official startup of Big Blue. Operated around York, PA for a little over twenty years, the locomotive would be reassigned to home rails along the Perkiomen Branch with the takeover of the Penn Eastern Rail Lines by Emmons in the late 1990s. Never operated on the Perk due to some mechanical issues the ex-RDG unit, by this time numbered as MPA 1506, was stored and soon acquired for preservation by the museum. It is currently the only member of the Reading's GP7 fleet in preservation, although a few more exist in operation of various shortlines around the country. Like many GP series units from the 1950s, the 621 is set up for long hood forward operation. |