The record-breaking railroad bankruptcy - Penn Central 

So I don't know if your still taking suggestion for videos. (You took down your "I Want you", video asking for leads on stories) but if there a storie that might interest you, look into Norte Dame College old coal line. "Rough Railroad XING" www.google.com/maps/@41.6932992,-86.2669887,3a,75y,329.64h,75.59t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sNqEmgmDkuDN1sRGpIvHIyw!2e0!5s20111001T000000!7i13312!8i6656?authuser=0&entry=ttu

If your still interested in American stories about railroads, looks into the Notre Dame College old coal line. It ran right through the middle of the campus back in the 1920 to 1990. But it suffered the same problem as Penn central did with dump trucks and the high way being more reasonable.

fr 💀

This is a great video well done man

The Engineer: 🤦‍♂️ The Brakeman: 🤬 The Conductor: 😔 The Passengers: 😐🫤😐🫤😐🫤😐🫤😐🫤

Same. I’d argue to show this in US history books too, especially those in schools. Schools are so badly undereducated about trains these days, let alone Penn Central. So many millions of my fellow Americans don’t even know that the Northeast almost collapsed once because of Penn Central’s failure

@@AndrewTheRocketCityRailfan4014 what do you think would’ve happened if the northeast corridor had indeed collapsed from Penn Central and Amtrak and Conrail were not formed to save it

Good question. There’d be nowhere else to make high speed rail out of an existing line. That idea to Americans would have died and or taken years and so much more money and building to bring into the country. There’s a ton more that could be said but that’s just what I know from the top of my head. I’m just glad the NEC didn’t collapse because too many lines in North America already have, especially the Lackawanna cutoff

@@AndrewTheRocketCityRailfan4014 I heard that some parts of the Lackawanna cut off we’re getting restored, although I have no idea about how much of the line that would equate to. In any case, the reason I asked about a worst case scenario for Penn Central, if Conrail and Amtrak never formed, and if deregulation never happened is that I had wondered these subjects for a possible alternate history about if the USSR won the Cold War in part because of severe infrastructure degradation in the United States and sustained social instability, starting from the 1960s onwards. The collapse of Penn Central, being far worse, and the cascading effect on other railroads is a key part of the story, because like how stuff like the Chernobyl disaster and other industrial failures in the Soviet union severely hurt the Soviet economy at a incredibly vulnerable time, I was going to have that the collapse of the railroad industry in much of the United States causes the break up of supply chains in large parts of the country and combined with chronic oil shortages that are far more severe than in real life. Roads and air travel are not able to take up the slack in shipping and transportation. many things happen to cause the collapse of the United States but the long and short of it is that by the 2020‘s, after a pro Soviet dictatorship is overthrown and a second United States begins There would be a large effort to rebuild the shattered and rusted infrastructure from the 20th century, and this would include rebuilding stuff like the northeast corridor, and the Lackawanna cut off. I am assuming that several new railroads are started because of this and Amtrak and Conrail get formed half a century later than real life from this effort. It would be a aspect of a far larger, bouncing back of America as a whole termed, the “American Renaissance.” As part of this speculative hypothetical, I wanted to ask what other major railroads could’ve collapsed into insolvency in the period of the 1960s and 70s other than Penn Central and the other railroads that got taken over by Conrail? I am aware that the Milwaukee Road by this point was very bankrupt and could’ve collapsed so that was going to be a part of it , but I’m not sure what other roads could’ve fallen apart and I wanted to know if you had any suggestions

What a gigachad Perlman was.

@@carltonleboss That is because unlike other railroad executives of their day (and now even) who were blue-blood, ivory tower, elitists who never had to work a hard day in their lives, Perlman started at the bottom working in rail yards as a regular scrub. He worked every shit job a railroad worker had to and earned his way to the top. Therefore, he knew how the railroads worked. Almost like the people who eventually become managers and bosses should start from the bottom so they know how the business operates vs. outsiders who have no clue which ultimately lead to companies failing with tons of corruption on top.

@@carltonleboss I would agree with that if only he didn't scrap all of the NYC's Hudsons and Niagaras...

​@@TheEldritchHyena exactly.

​@@TheEldritchHyena I get it, railfans want to see the stuff we value as historically important saved and Perlman's lack of any nostalgia as he sent all the steam engines he had in-droves to the scrap heap is not how railfans think. It is the same attitude that has people banging on the name of Dr. Beeching in the UK, and I feel is somewhat inherited at least via the "Thomas foamers" among us from watching to many TV specials about "steamies vs. diesels." But, separate out the nostalgia for steam power and look at it as a businessman balancing the books. Steam is just another "asset" on the railroad, and once it has outlived it's usefulness it is most logical to strike it from the company as quickly as possible. It is clean and efficient business practices, even if it leaves little room for nostalgia. Perlman was clearly an efficient businessman and he made the call that was the most practical from his vantage point in the company. Number goes up, steam goes down; good for the bottom line. There are benefits to keeping steam for publicity's sake as Union Pacific, Canadian Pacific, Norfolk & Western and the Southern all did at various points in their lives (and as UP and CPKC still do to this day), but at that point those exist really because the steam budget was likely subtly shifted from the "operating locomotive expense" line to the "advertising" line. UP 844 and UP 4014 are basically rolling billboards for a company like Union Pacific, and even then the recent donations to Silvis show that when UP corporate wants to trim the fat they will kick locomotives like 3985 out of the stable still (I think UP Steam worked hard with Silvis to make sure those engines found a good home, but one can imagine the bosses in Omaha lacked the same nostalgia for say 3985 as the actual steam team might).

I like the non-BR Black locomotives at the likes of the KWVR.

That's why I love the early Burlington Northern because you had colors from five different railroads all mashed together. No wonder the BN's first few years were called "The Rainbow Era".

​@@chehalisvalleyrailproducti8913this is the same case with Conrail, CSX, and bnsf

Like a certain black Class 08 shunter?

Completely ignores why the government had to regulate in the first place and how the ignorance at the management level fueled the disaster. Here's your Von Mises trophy! Now go work your third job.

And under-regulation leads to Norfolk Southern.

The ICC would have still killed them. It literally set rules restricting how much money railroads could charge to transport goods, and it didn’t really believe in the concept of inflation. What finally did the ICC in was the collapse of Penn Central. Once that happened, the federal government took over the northeastern railroads and made them into Conrail with the aim of fixing the bad management, axing the worst lines, making Conrail profitable, and re-privatizing it. Once the government was running the railroads, they realized that it was impossible to actually do that. Facing with the sudden realization that they’d be forced to spend taxpayer money to run Conrail at a loss basically forever, Congress decided that the ICC’s rules needed to go. Similarly to how the destruction of Penn Station saved Grand Central, the death of Penn Central probably saved most of the other railroads in the US.

100% SPOT ON 👍

Which is ironically what would happen at the split of Conrail lol

Penn Central is the exact reason the KCS/CN merger was denied, parallel lines and management conflicts, CN only wanted KCS to screw over CP, like how the Pennsylvania threw a wrench in the NYC/B&O merger

In theory consolidating duplicate lines of competitors makes sense. The merged company can take on all the customers while reducing overhead. What killed that calculation was a regulatory board forcing them to operate redundant routes.

They really had no other choice. Going deeper into the merger era reveals a few things. The New York Central’s intended merger was a three-way merger between the NYC, Chesapeake & Ohio, and Baltimore & Ohio. Under that plan, the Pennsylvania Railroad and Norfolk & Western would merge. Ultimately, NYC execs and C&O execs couldn’t find common ground, the ICC denied all of those merger requests, and N&W wanted away from the PRR as it viewed the PRR as a house of cards about to fall. Curiously, NYC’s president viewed PRR in the same light. Left with no other options, NYC had to merge with PRR and the rest was history

@@Engine33Truck Outstanding one paragraph summary. One piece of additional color commentary, it was Robert Young ----- backed by Bass family Texas oil money that helped him to win a mid 1950s proxy fight with old guard NYC Vanderbilt leftover dumb-ass inheritor types ----- who together with PRR boss James Symes who were the sole big proponent instigators of the PRR-NYC 2-peas-in-a-pod-for-merger-savings. Young commits suicide and Symes eventually retired. Only Symes-Young were super gung-ho about the idea. PRR Saunders and NYC Perlman never were enthusiastic (esp if New Haven forced upon them), yet like a single minded drug addict Saunders kept on (including labor contract stupidity ---- his natural workforce attrition argument was crap) and Perlman felt he lost any other optionality. PRR-NYC guys hated each others guts, insolvent New Haven & extra bad labor agreements, unlike say BN merger where it was a Hill family reunion love-in (everybody likes Louis Menks!) and loserboy Milwaukee Road was told to get lost (fun fact: Menks was head huntered to become PC boss and he turned PC down).

sounds like when me and a friend play railway corp. I'm of the opinion "might as well move half a building worth of freight and get paid a shit tonne on arrival. Minimizing overhead only using one engine" and he does the "moving freight fast means I'll be paid faster, cancelling out the overhead of using multiple engines" it gets interesting when we're using each others track.

ditto

People love Conrail, but forgot they are the ones who abandoned so much trackage.... As long as the government is into tomfoolery, we should be eliminating as many costs/taxes on railroads building new trackage.

In this case, the photographer is on a high level platform, the height of which could interfere with the passage of freight trains.

You not wrong. Based on several videos I've watch on Penn Central, even though both parties were to blame, it sound like the managers of the Pennsylvania Railroad are largely to blame because the New York Central managers saw the state of the railroads and knew changes had to made, but the Pennsy managers were roadblocking them from doing so. Essentially NYC was being smart, while PRR was being stubborn... in a bad way.

Abe was actually quoting Jesus of Nazareth. "Knowing their thoughts, he said to them, 'Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand.'" Matthew 12:25 (ESV)

An excellent read. Covers the financial aspects and the players who were involved in the formation of PC.

Except the Rock Island actually had competent leadership for the most part. It was the inverse of Penn Central where Penn Central was the giant fish in a small pond, Rock Island was a small fish in a small pond surrounded by other small fish. Rock Island had unlucky routes that may have worked back in the day but became obsolete as time went on thus competition went to the other railroads around it. They were on the way to recovery when a strike happened so the unions killed the company even when they offered to show the books, the unions refused.

@@OriginalBongoliathThe ironic thing about the Rock Island is that their Choctaw Route, Amarillo-Little Rock-Memphis, was mostly abandoned, but nowadays would be very useful.

@@OriginalBongoliath yea

Steam Engines Are Good

@@alicehodges9964 But the Penn Central never owned any steam engines.

​@@lukechristmas3951I Like Steam Engines

I'd argue CPKC makes it a Big Five.

@@mirzaahmed6589 CPKC is an invasive species, I'm not counting that ToT

Funnily, if you look at one of their early promotional videos, the "Whiteworm" was supposed to resembled interlocked knuckle couplers. I like that much better

@@russellgxy2905 they also made the P red or the C red but they found out the red would fade quickly

That's called a gauntlet track. Basically, it's a turnout configuration that slightly shifts the train in areas with no space for another full track. For example, an express or freight can take the through rails that keep it furthest from a station platform. A local that needs to stop at the station can take the diverging rails that brings it right up to the platform.

@@sharkymcsharknose2979 Ahhh, I see, thanks for explaining that! Cheers

The two contrasting styles of NYC and PRR can be illustrated by the way executives eat lunch in those days. NYC execs eat in a democratic manner, whatever the position. PRR execs eat in a hierarchical manner, with the senior executive present leading the others.

You can count on us!

*CENN PENTRAL*

thats a gauntlet track pretty much use for freight trains to have a larger height and space clearance

gauntlet track used pretty much for freight trains having more space

You're obviously not very old then.

Dude, look up VIA Rail in Canada. Amtrak is a luxury service compared to what we have here. There is a train that goes to my home town, it's a 4 hour drive, taking 12 hours by train. It's a joke of a service.

Who?

Did you not watch the video? A huge chunk of Penn Central's problems was the government getting in its way restricting what it could and couldn't do.

the Us tryed Nationlzation in 1918 .it failed big time. how young are you

That is likely a pooled power arrangement deal, not an unorganized mess deal. Railroads keep the power that started the train on the train, even if that train started on a different railroad. I've seen Ferromex cars and engines in New Hampshire and Maine.