Railroad B-25J

[Silberpfeil]

Maybe this is old news to some of you, but I had never heard this piece of aviation folklore:

During the late-1950's and into the mid-1960's, the New York Central Rail Road owned and operated a modified North American B-25J Mitchell (44-30996).  The railroad acquired it as surplus for $3,000 from Davis-Monthan, and then re-configured it into a combination passenger and freight carrier (registered as N 9991Z).  It was painted in the same gray-and-black scheme as its locomotives (trailing are a pair of photos I scanned out of a magazine, along with captions).  It eventually became a casualty of the railroad filing for bankruptcy and was sold to private owners, and then re-sold and registered in the Philippines where it was destroyed (on the ground) during a cyclone in 1970.  Some of these tales you can't make up...