Open-Hopper, G38 Ore Jenny

History: The PRR designed and built these cars to haul ore from docks in Philadelphia and Cleveland to steel mills in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia.
The original class of ore jennies built by the PRR, these cars were designed to carry heavy grades of iron ore pellets. 1000 G38s were built in 1960 by the Sam Rea Shops. As time went on, ores had a lower iron content and were therefore lighter, which led to the development of the G39s. Despite their lower capacity, the G38s could still be found in service until the mid to late 1990s on some routes. The vast majority of the G38s were retrofitted with 77-ton trucks and re-classed G38Bs. (Source: The Conrail Historical Society)

Railroad/Company: The Pennsylvania Railroad (reporting mark PRR) was an American Class I railroad, founded in 1846. Commonly referred to as the "Pennsy," the PRR was headquartered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The PRR was the largest railroad by traffic and revenue in the U.S. for the first half of the twentieth century. Over the years, it acquired, merged with or owned part of at least 800 other rail lines and companies. At the end of 1925, it operated 10,515 miles of rail line; in the 1920s, it carried nearly three times the traffic as other railroads of comparable length, such as the Union Pacific or Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroads. Its only formidable rival was the New York Central (NYC), which carried around three-quarters of PRR's ton-miles.

At one time, the PRR was the largest publicly traded corporation in the world, with a budget larger than that of the U.S. government and a workforce of about 250,000 people. The corporation still holds the record for the longest continuous dividend history: it paid out annual dividends to shareholders for more than 100 years in a row.

In 1968, PRR merged with rival NYC to form the Penn Central Transportation Company, which filed for bankruptcy within two years. The viable parts were transferred in 1976 to Conrail, which was itself broken up in 1999, with 58 percent of the system going to the Norfolk Southern Railway (NS), including nearly all of the former PRR. Amtrak received the electrified segment east of Harrisburg.