914Driver said:No idea .....
914Driver said:No idea .....
Doing some digging on that rig, I found an obituary on a Facebook page, Museum of Railway Workers, with that photo attached. Sounds like it belonged to a man named Jim Coleman.
"Jim owned a trucking company that was hired to haul off the the rails from the scrapping of the line from Durango to Chama. The sub-contractor in charge proved to be inadequate to the job and his trucks sat waiting. Jim many times would direct the scrapping crews so his trucks could go, and the main contractor was so impressed they hired him to the job. At this time the railroad was looking to scrap everything. The main contractor (Houston Compressed Steel) only cared about the metal it could salvage; rails and trucks. The previous contractor would burn the cars down to salvage the steel. Jim found it more lucrative to remove the trucks and sell the body’s to ranches and businesses (the majority of the boxcars or cattle cars you find hidden around Colorado were ones he sold). He also found a market for buying the trucks from HCS at scrap value and reselling them to small amusement parks (Dollyworld, Cedar Point, and a few others all ride on old Rio Grande trucks). Finally he would save the best condition cars for himself and to donate."
So I'm guessing that they built that thing to be able to move the cars they were scrapping, and move carloads of ties and rails from wherever the were working to easier to access areas. D&RGW never dieselized the narrow gauge operations, so their only other option would have been to borrow D&RGW's narrow gauge steamers and crews to help tear up the rails.
Just an FYI - Virtual Railfan is hosting a "virtual trainshow" today and tomorrow. Lots of vendor features, clinics, etc. Of course, it gets preempted at 3:30 by Daytona.
Update on the Pacific Enterprise Network- the hills are coming alive!
Today, 53 years ago, the Pennsylvania Railroad and New York Central merged to form Penn Central, while the Erie-Lackawanna and Delaware & Hudson were placed under the control fo the Norfolk & Western to "protect competition in the North East."
E8 #4312 at Bay Head Yard in Bay Head, NJ
I have to wonder on the operational end of Penn Central felt as positive as the marketing folks in charge of this video
And then 6 years later, hat in one hand, tin cup in the other, Penn Central made a much more humble video.
It's mind blowing to me to think about how automobiles & trucking nearly completely obliterated the railroad industry.
In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :
I'd argue it was the Eisenhower interstate highway system and the profusion of airfields, trained pilots, and cheap surplus aircraft that were primarily responsible. Passenger service suffered first, with local freight (and the branch lines that carried it) getting hit a bit later.
In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :
Not just automobiles and trucking. Airplanes robbed time-sensitive freight and long-distance passengers traffic. And the Interstate Commerce Commission had way too much authority. Railroads couldn't set their own rates, most new construction and all mergers had to be approved by the ICC. Monon had a beautiful coal-hauling operation planned from the Ohio River to Michigan City, projecting enough traffic to warrant double-tracking a couple years after completion. The ICC had to approve the construction of trans-loading facilities at either end, and for unfathomable reasons refused to allow it, consigning Monon to their fate. Numerous ailing railroads tried to merge to prevent a collapse, such as Milwaukee Road, and were turned down repeatedly by the ICC. PRR owned 85% of Lehigh Valley stocks and yet the ICC wouldn't allow them to fully integrate the LV. It wasn't until 1980 that the Staggers Act finally took a lot of the teeth out of the ICC and allowed railroads to operate in profitable manners.
And then the Northeast had its own set of unique problems on top of that.
For starters, it was way overbuilt. Post -Civil War there was "railroad fever", every town had to have a railroad, and so you ended up with too many railroads crammed in the same area, all competing for the same markets. Camden, NY, near me, has a population of less than 5,000 people and yet it was simultaneously served by the New York Central and Lehigh Valley. Lehigh Valley and CNJ tracks ran side by side up through the Lehigh Gorge, headed to the same destinations, and PRR and Reading ran commuter operations to Atlantic City on adjoining tracks (they used to literally race trains side by side). In a weird reverse twist, the NYO&W, while it was being constructed, was basically denied access to many of the larger upstate New York cities because they already had too many railroads serving them, so the O&W went the wrong side of Oneida Lake, where there wasn't enough population to raise an umbrella, and missed major markets. Some railroads did realize this and tried to consolidate operations. CNJ and LV combined the best of their Lehigh Gorge trackage for one more efficient route. Years before the Erie-Lackawanna merger, DL&W and Erie dumped their duplicate trackage and terminals and shared facilities. PRR and Reading turned their Atlantic City operations into the joint-operated Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Line.
The anthracite market was a big draw for Northeast lines. D&H, LV, DL&W, Reading, NYO&W, Lehigh & Hudson River, and Lehigh & New England all went all-in on hauling anthracite, and when the coal market was strong, earnings were strong. But they became too reliant on it. NYO&W was only moving 2% of Pennsylvania anthracite, but it made up 53% of their profits. When the coal market began to die down, and the PA mines tapered off or became too dangerous to work (One coal mine caused a sinkhole to open up under a DL&W yard, and the Knox Mine infamously flooded when they were digging only a foot below the Susquehanna River bottom), their went a huge chunk of their profits.
The construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway wiped out a huge bunch of traffic. Railroads made a tidy profit hauling grain, iron ore and other commodities from midwest markets to eastern markets or eastern ports or from Atlantic ports to the Great Lakes. With the construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway, products could be loaded on in Michigan and sail all the way out into the Atlantic and to overseas markets, or around down the eastern seaboard.
Hurricane Agnes in 1972. The Erie-Lackawanna was just starting to get its act together and show glimmers of hope as a profitable railroad operation under Norfolk & Western operation. And then Hurricane Agnes wiped out a huge chunk of their tracks, as well as the Lehigh Valley and D&H. N&W threw in the towel on both the D&H and E-L, and the E-L immediately went into bankruptcy from which they never recovered.
And Penn Central was a huge blow to everyone, they pulled all the neighboring railroads down with them. When they declared bankruptcy in 1970, the PC was relieved of its obligation to pay fees to various Northeastern railroads for the use of their railcars and other operations. Conversely, the other railroads' obligations to pay those fees to the Penn Central were not waived. This imbalance in payments would prove fatal to many railroads, particularly the Lehigh Valley, who would go bankrupt only 2 months later. The Lehigh & Hudson River was barely staying afloat as a bridge line using the interchange with the PC at Poughkeepsie, but PC didn't want to maintain the Poughkeepsie Bridge. When the bridge mysteriously burned, it slit the L&HR's throat and they went bankrupt. Penn Central accidentally ended up with a monopoly on direct access to Manhattan, which meant that their inability to maintain a schedule snarled up every other railroad's passenger efforts in and out of Manhattan because they had to interchange with Penn Central. The New England lines like Bangor & Aroostook relied heavily on shipping potatoes, but when Penn Central lost a bunch of potato trains in their Selkirk Yard and the potatoes rotted onboard the trains, potato farmers swore they would never do business with the railroads again, and moved their product via trucks, depriving the New England roads of a valuable customer. Basically, anything that interchanged with the PC was absolutely berkeleyed up.
At the beginning of the 20th century, staged train wrecks were staged at fairs and were as popular as Demo Derbies are now.
Joe Conollly staged more than 70 train wrecks demolishing 170 locomotives between 1896 and 1932.
Earned the nick name "Head On Joe".
Penn Central was really a last ditch effort. Earlier on, PRR and NYC had both realized they were hurting and had tried to pursue other mergers.
When Robert Young took over New York Central in '54, he realized that the Central was in worse shape than he had been led to believe and he had to merge it with something else to survive. Young comitted suicide in '58 when NYC stock prices tanked and his protege Alfred Perlman, who had worked wonders over at Chicago, Burlington & Quincy and D&RGW, took over and began turning the Central around, stripping it down into a lean modern efficient machine. When he caught wind of C&O and B&O moving to merge he was understandably spooked by the monster that would result, and tried to lobby to get the New York Central to get included in. The C&O was interested, but the B&O was in poor shape and so was the NYC and they didn't want to take on two ailing railroads. So the idea was that the C&O and B&O would merge, the C&O would invest in rehabilitating the B&O, while Perlman continued to get the Central back on track, and a few years down the road, the hopefully-healthier New York Central would be merged in.
Pennsylvania Railroad caught wind of the B&O/C&O/NYC three-way merger and screamed bloody murder. They would be facing a serious powerhouse that would clobber them. So, PRR set off in search of a partner, dragging along the Lehigh Valley, who they owned a 85% share in and were basically running as a division. At the time, Norfolk & Western, who had kicked off the series of mergers by buying out Virginian in 1959, was eyeballing the Wabash and the Nickel Plate. PRR and Norfolk & Western had a very close relationship: PRR had borrowed N&W steam power for testing, had leased N&W motive power during shortages, survived the lean years by hauling N&W coal and had paid dividends for the last few years largely due to earnings from the huge share of N&W stocks that the PRR held. N&W was leery of merging that many lines at once, plus they saw the PRR's terrible financial condition, and told PRR to hold off, while they finalized the deal with Wabash and Nickel Plate and got them integrated and running smoothly and then they would integrate the PRR down the road.
But the PRR and the NYC got paranoid that they would be left out in the cold by their respective partners, and were concerned that they couldn't compete with the resulting super-lines. So, since they were the only two on the dance floor, they decided to partner up. Neither really wanted to merge with the other, they were just worried about their future agains the two new railroads in the making. Somehow, either through bluff or sheer arrogance, PRR managed to get the NYC to pursue them, rather than the other way around, and the rest was history.
Ironically, the thinking for the C&O/B&O/NYC merger and the N&W/Wabash/NKP/PRR/LV mergers were correct. After Conrail was split up, CSX (who was born from the B&O/C&O merger) ended up with the New York Central portion of Conrail, while Norfolk Southern ended up with the PRR and Lehigh Valley portions of Conrail.
Perhaps the eastern railroads should have merged with a western railroad and become transcontinental.
LS_BC8 said:Perhaps the eastern railroads should have merged with a western railroad and become transcontinental.
ATSF looked long and hard at the Erie-Lackawanna in '74, which would have stretched from California all the way to New Jersey via a connection at Chicago. E-L had the longest route from Chicago to the Atlantic but they were really the only one up for grabs. But the E-L was in such poor shape from Hurricane Agnes that ATSF decided not to take that one on.
I've been digging up vintage street running photos. Some are just amazing.
In reply to Appleseed :
That first pic is amazing. Must have been close to the yard.
This is the station we used in Strafford, Pa., about a mile from the house. Dad commuted on it every day and I commuted to school for a while.
Could Penn Central have really ever prospered? Seems unlikely, but it definitely could have been done in a better manner that was less painful and less guaranteed for disaster.
For starters, the ICC shouldn't have dragged their heels on the merger. It took nine years to get the merger finalized and approved by the ICC. When the talks began, the two lines were pretty similar in advancement, with the NYC having a slight edge. In those 9 years leading up to '68, Perlman over at the NYC went wild on spending and improving the railroad and getting it up to speed. Better communications, Centralized Traffic Control, more hump yards, selling off any and all excess, stripping down useless 4-track mains down to double track and then using it more efficiently, employing computer systems everywhere possible. PRR meanwhile, continued to operate the same as they did in '47, any and all development just stagnated. Some of that may have been that PRR was doubting that the ICC would approve the merger, but part of it was PRR was just stuck in their ways. When the merger finally did go through, there was such a huge gap in how operations were done that it was a mess.
Better management on the PRR end. Alfred Perlman at the NYC was ahead of his time, and on the right track (pun intended) to how railroads needed to grow and change. But the conditions of the merger meant that he was in the passenger seat and PRR's Scott Saunders was in charge. Perlman was an operations guy, who looked at long-term gains and knew that you had to spend money to make money down the road. Saunders was a finance guy, and was all about the short-term. They never got along and Saunders basically ran Perlman out after a year. Saunders made some very poor decisions. A big one was, the ICC required the PRR to divest their N&W stock before the merger, but the N&W stocks were keeping the PRR afloat. Saunders was trying to find the next big cash cow and diversified bought shares of Executive Jet, Arvida, Macco, Great Southwest. What do these all have in common? Real-Estate and Transportation require large amounts of capital! If you have two transportation subsidiaries and three real estate subsidiaries, one of them is going to suffer from malnutrition. He did buy shares in Buckeye Pipeline and that was a wise choice that made big money for PRR/PC. He made some other disastrous choices as well: The Pennsy actually received permission numerous times to discontinue passenger trains but Saunders wouldn't allow it in order to garner political support for the Penn Central merger, Pennsy also was allowed to stop using unneeded brakemen but Saunders decided to keep the men on the payroll and provide any workers that were laid-off with hefty severance packages, he also held onto the Detroit, Toledo & Ironton, which was making less than $1.8 million a year, when the N&W offered to buy it for $25 million.
A better choice for the Pennsy would have been the Wabash's Herman H. Pevler. Who was Pevler? Pevler was pretty much the Pennsy's version of Perlman. Described as "a driver who operated with doors open and coats off," citing the "sheer force of his personality" and vigor in his activities, Pevler was a true operations man. Folks at the N&W hadn't much cared for him, but he'd made big, successful changes at the Wabash. PRR was big on hiring PRR men, and Pevler had started out as a MoW man at the PRR and later a division superintendent, so PRR hardliners would have welcomed him.Pevler likely would have still acquired Buckeye for $84 million, but the remaining $116 million that was used for diversification would have been plowed back into the railroad, upgrading yards and adding CTC. The dividends from the N&W and Buckeye also likely would have been invested into rehabbing the Pennsy. Pevler gladly cut down the N&W's passenger service, so it's logical that he would have had no problem with doing the same at the Pennsy. If Pevler had gotten permission to drop the firemen, he would have dropped them immediately.Pevler likely would have sold the DT&I to N&W and if he had asked that the N&W paid for it in stock, the PRR's dividends from the N&W would have swelled to $28.5 million dollars a year, and its ownership would have increased to 3.3 million shares. The Pennsy would get $2.6 million dollars a year in dividends (from the 260,000 shares of the N&W added because of the DT&I deal) from the sale of a property that had a net income of $2 million dollars in the best of times.
Not accepting the ICC's demand that New Haven be included into Penn Central. New Haven brought absolutely nothing to the party. Who in their right mind thinks that the best thing to do to a merger to save to struggling companies is to force them to include another destroyed company? Patrick B McGinnis had run the New Haven into the ground. Most of the places that the New Haven went to, the New York Central and its old Boston & Albany division already went to. Most of its industries that it served had packed up and moved south. Almost immediately after the merger, Penn Central diverted most of the old New Haven freight traffic over the New York Central Water Level Route, demonstrating just how pointless the New Haven truly was. The only part of the New Haven that was truly important and still in use is the intercity commuter operations. Realistically, the New Haven should have been just stripped down to those key lines and then operated by a federal, state or city government similar to MBTA.
Creating Amtrak earlier. Amtrak was formed in 1971 as a direct response to Penn Central's bankruptcy, but really it needed to be formed at least a decade earlier. Around '48-'49 was when passenger service began to take a nose-dive, and the ICC also set the industry-wide rates for passenger service, and railroads just could not make a profit. But they were also obligated to provide passenger service, and the ICC had to approve any eliminations in service. Railroads spent decades screaming that they were losing their ass on passenger service but they couldn't get rid of it, and the government largely did nothing. New York Central had so many passenger obligations that it just buried them alive. Perlman was trying his best and actually turning a profit, but he could have turned a hell of a lot more if they had been able to abandon passenger service by the government creating Amtrak 10-15 years earlier. And they weren't the only one.
Doing the merger in the "right direction". PRR was mismanaged and financially ailing. New York Central was showing signs of hope under a brilliant president. So how come the PRR had to be the one to buy out the NYC? This put the PRR in more debt and resulted in a 60:40 ownership split of Penn Central, in favor of PRR. Meaning that the same terrible management now controlled the largest transportation company in the US. I have to assume this was due to when the merger proceedings started (1958) vs when they ended (1967). In '58, things appeared rosy at the PRR thanks to those Norfolk & Western stocks. Meanwhile at NYC, their stock prices had just hit rock bottom and cost investors millions and president Robert R Young committed suicide because things looked so bleak. At first glance, that made PRR look like the natural leader. Nine years later, PRR had divested themselves of that N&W stocks and spent money frivoulously on anything but the railroad, while NYC looked like the healthier of the two. But by then, they had spent nine years trying to work the merger through, they weren't going to start over to reverse the roles. And so Perlman was relegated to a secondary role and then squeezed out by Saunders. After Perlman's death, his son stated, "My father was Vice-Chairman of the Penn Central and has been quoted as saying that was not a merger, but a takeover."
And finally, and I'm going to toe the line and try not to cause a flounder (as if the mods ever look at this thread, hah!), too much government regulation. Now, obviously some sort of regulation was needed after the nonsense that Vanderbilt, Gould and JP Morgan got up to. But, the ICC was frankly way too powerful at this point. They had final say over what services could be offered and cancelled, as well as industry-wide rates. A railroad is losing money on a service and wishes to discontinue it, but the ICC won't allow them to because they deem it necessary. Okay, then they need to charge the customers more, but the ICC controls the rates and won't allow them to charge more either. Basically, railroads built a line and then hoped that the ICC would allow them to make money. President Nixon (my personal favorite) finally saw what was going on and started a trend of appointing ICC regulators who were pro-deregulation, then passed the Railroad Regulatory & Reform Act (called the 3R Act) that gave the railroads a little more control and laid the groundwork for Conrail. Even then, Conrail kind of stumbled along and was expected to fail, until 1980 when the Staggers Act was passed. Created in response to Rock Island's abandonment, the Staggers Act allowed:
The Staggers Act put railroads in control of their own fates and railroad industry costs and prices were halved over a ten-year period, the railroads reversed their historic loss of traffic to the trucking industry, and railroad industry profits began to recover. If the Act had been taken earlier in the '50s or '60s, it likely could have avoided a lot of the mess, although the Northeast was still overbuilt and needed to be parsed down.
In reply to Appleseed :
The first one is Oshawa, I know
In reply to Appleseed :
I like the background of the black train Western Pacific one. "Spaghetti Depot"
In reply to NickD :
I was looking at this Nickel Plate map, which includes many - but definitely not all - of the other railroads in the east & midwest at that time, and it's just crazy how overdeveloped the US railroad system was at that point.
You'll need to log in to post.
