Quotulatiousness

December 16, 2021

Fallen Flag — the Chicago Great Western Railroad

Filed under: History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

This month’s Classic Trains fallen flag feature is the Chicago Great Western Railroad (CGW) by H. Roger Grant. Not being over-familiar with the US Midwest, while I’d heard of this railway I had no real background knowledge about it. The earliest charter was granted to the Chicago, St. Charles & Mississippi Airline in 1835, but no construction took place under the original management and the charter rights were passed on to the Minnesota and North Western Railroad (M&NW) in 1854. Actual construction of the line did not begin until 1884, connecting St. Paul, Minnesota with Dubuque, Iowa. The M&NW was taken over by the Chicago, St. Paul & Kansas City Railroad under the control of Alpheus Beede Stickney, a St. Paul businessman. By 1892, when the system adopted the Chicago Great Western name, there were routes to Omaha, Nebraska, St. Joseph, Missouri and Chicago.

The Panic of 1907 ended Stickney’s control of the railway and it ended up in the hands of J.P. Morgan:

Even though Stickney had imaginatively assembled a Midwestern trunk line, he ultimately lost his railroad. The brief but severe Bankers’ Panic of 1907 threw CGW into receivership, a fate the company had avoided during the much more severe Panic of 1893. The nation’s financial wizard, J.P. Morgan, took control, and in 1909 a reorganized Chicago Great Western Railroad made its debut. Morgan wisely placed Samuel Morse Felton in charge, because the new president excelled as a railroad manager. His greatest triumph before joining the Great Western had been to turn the Chicago & Alton into a profitable property.

[…]

The Felton years in Chicago Great Western railroad history resulted in a rehabilitated physical plant. Changes in rolling stock caught the attention of thousands of on-line residents. In 1910, for example, CGW purchased 10 Baldwin 2-6-6-2 Mallets (“Snakes”, as employees called them), and the road’s own shop forces at Oelwein, Iowa, rebuilt three F-3 class 2-6-2s (CGW had 95 total Prairie types) into three more 2-6-6-2s. Unfortunately, these giants did not work out, and in 1916 the Baldwins were sold to the Clinchfield and the homebuilds were rebuilt into 4-6-2s. In the Mallets’ place appeared reliable yet powerful 2-8-2s, of which CGW owned 35.

The railroad became a leader in the use of gasoline and later diesel motive power. Before World War I CGW assembled a small fleet of McKeen motor cars, knife-nosed “wind-splitters” that replaced steam-powered branchline and local trains. Its 1924 gas-electric car M-300 was the first unit of any type sold by the Electro-Motive Co., and it helped replace steam on trains 3 and 4 on the 509-mile Chicago–Omaha run. In 1929 CGW remodeled three McKeens to make up a deluxe gas-electric train, the Minneapolis–Rochester (Minn.) Blue Bird. CGW was mostly satisfied with its pioneering internal-combustion equipment.

1906 advertising blotter for the Chicago Great Western Railroad’s passenger trains.
Wikimedia Commons.

CGW’s independent life came to an end in the same era as a lot of small to medium sized railways disappeared into corporate mergers, take-overs, or bankruptcy:

Being a small road in an era when competitors were expanding through mergers led to the corporate demise of the CGW. Saying that shareholders “must be protected”, the board sought a partner. Although the expectation was union with KCS or perhaps the Soo Line, the aggressive Chicago & North Western, headed by resourceful Ben W. Heineman, made an acceptable proposal, and in 1968 Chicago Great Western Railroad history ended with it becoming a Fallen Flag.

C&NW operated CGW switchers and F units for a short time, and assimilated Great Western’s only second­ generation diesels — eight GP30s and nine SD40s, all painted in the final solid “Deramus red” seen also on KCS and Katy — into the yellow fleet.

Although for a short time much of the former Great Western maintained its identity as C&NW’s Missouri Division, that operating organization ended and its lines started to disappear. By the 1980s much of the trackage had been retired, and at the start of the 21st century only about 145 miles remained. Survivors include portions of the main lines in Iowa (Mason City to the Fort Dodge area; Oelwein–Waterloo; and a leg into Council Bluffs); the Cannon Falls (Minn.) branch; and terminal trackage around South St. Paul, Minn., and just west of Chicago.

November 4, 2021

Fallen Flag — the Milwaukee Road

Filed under: Business, History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

This month’s Classic Trains fallen flag feature is the Milwaukee Road (MILW) by George Drury. As with most major US railways, the Milwaukee Road was a long-term collection of different railway lines, some merged for obvious economic benefit and others taken over to reduce competition, but the first of the components that eventually evolved into the Milwaukee Road system was the 1847 Milwaukee and Waukesha Railroad. This line was incorporated to connect the Wisconsin city of Milwaukee to the river traffic along the Mississippi River, and the corporate name was changed even before construction began to the Milwaukee and Mississippi Railroad to more adequately convey the purpose of the line. The first segment opened in November 1850 connecting Milwaukee and Wauwatosa, a distance of five miles, then to Waukesha a few months later, then to Madison, but not extending all the way to the river at Prairie du Chien until 1857.

In that year, another of the frequent financial crises of the era struck and the company struggled on for two years, but eventually went into receivership in 1859. New owner the Milwaukee and Prairie du Chien Railroad took possession in 1861. After the Civil War, the company was merged with the Milwaukee and St. Paul and in 1874 the combined railroad became known as the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul with the completion of a new line connecting with Chicago.

In the next few years the road built or bought lines from Racine, Wis., to Moline, Ill.; from Chicago to Savanna, Ill., and two lines west across southern Minnesota. The road reached Council Bluffs, Iowa, across the Missouri River from Omaha, in 1882, and reached Kansas City in 1887. In 1893 the CM&StP acquired the Milwaukee & Northern, which reached from Milwaukee into Michigan’s upper peninsula.

In 1900 the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul was considered one of the most prosperous, progressive, and enterprising railroads in the U.S. Its lines reached from Chicago to Minneapolis, Omaha, and Kansas City. Secondary lines and branches covered most of the area between the Omaha and Minneapolis lines in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Minnesota. Lines covered much of eastern South Dakota and reached the Missouri River at three places in that state: Running Water, Chamberlain, and Evarts. Except for the last few miles into Kansas City and operation over Union Pacific rails from Council Bluffs to Omaha, the Missouri River formed the western boundary of the CM&StP. (“Milwaukee Road” as a name or nickname did not come into use until the late 1920s; “St. Paul Road” was sometimes used as a nickname, but the railroad’s advertising used the full name).

The Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway in 1893.
Poor’s Manual of the Railroads of the United States via Wikimedia Commons.

The battle over control of the Northern Pacific and the Burlington in 1901 made the Milwaukee Road aware that without its own route to the Pacific it would be at its competitors’ mercy. At the same time the Milwaukee Road was experiencing a change in its traffic from dominance by wheat to a more balanced mix of agricultural and industrial products. Arguments against extension westward included the possibility of the construction of the Panama Canal and the presence of strong competing railroads: Union Pacific, Northern Pacific, and Great Northern. Arguments for the extension banked heavily on the growth of traffic to and from the Pacific Northwest.

In 1901 the president of the Milwaukee Road dispatched an engineer west to estimate the cost of duplicating Northern Pacific’s line. His figure was $45 million. Such an expenditure required considerable thought; not until November 1905 did Milwaukee’s board of directors authorize construction of a line west to Tacoma and Seattle.

In 1905 and ’06 the Milwaukee Road incorporated subsidiaries in South Dakota, Montana, Idaho, and Washington. The Washington company was renamed the Chicago, Milwaukee & Puget Sound Railway, and it took over the other three companies in 1908. It was absorbed by the CM&StP in 1912.

The extension began with a bridge across the Missouri River at Mobridge, 3 miles upstream from Evarts, S.D. Roadbed and rails pushed out from several points into unpopulated territory. The work went quickly, and the road was open to Butte, Mont., in August 1908.

Unfortunately for the Milwaukee, the Pacific extension was much more expensive to build than the initial estimates (it jumped from $45 million in the 1901 survey to $60 million in 1905), eventually weighing down the company books with $257 million in debt and worse, the traffic estimates for the new line turned out to be wildly optimistic. The difficulties of operating steam locomotives across the extension in winter pushed the railway toward electrification as an efficiency and cost-saving move. Beginning in 1914, sections of the line were converted to overhead catenary power until a total of 645 route-miles were being operated with electric locomotives, reportedly saving the company over a million dollars per year.

A Milwaukee “Little Joe” electric locomotive hauling a freight train along the Pacific extension in 1941. The “Little Joe” locomotives were originally built for the Soviet Union in the late 1940s but the US government cancelled the export license as relations with the Soviets deteriorated and the Cold War escalated. The Milwaukee Road bought 12 of the 20 from General Electric for $1 million during the Korean War.
Wikimedia Commons.

Despite the savings through electrification, the Pacific extension drove the company into bankruptcy in 1925, re-emerging as the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, but the new company also had to declare bankruptcy during the Great Depression. Trustees ran the railroad for ten years until renewed civilian traffic after World War 2 allowed normal operations to resume. As with most North American railroads, the good times didn’t last and by the late 1950s, the Milwaukee’s management were looking for a merger partner to help cut costs and shed unprofitable branch lines. Unlike the rival merger of of Northern Pacific, Great Northern, Burlington Route, and the Spokane, Portland and Seattle Railway into Burlington Northern, the ICC blocked a merger between the Milwaukee Road and the Chicago and North Western. The ICC also blocked a later application for the Milwaukee to be included in the Union Pacific/Rock Island merger.

With declining business, deferred maintenance issues on most lines, and some self-induced financial issues caused by selling off rolling stock and leasing it back (which exacerbated car shortages leading to further reductions in business), the company had no funds to replace the failing “Little Joe” locomotives on the Pacific extension, so electrification was abandoned in 1974. George Drury sums up the mistakes that led to the end:

Over the decades, the road’s management had made too many wrong decisions: building the Pacific Extension, not electrifying between the two electrified portions, purchasing the line into Indiana, and in the 1960s choosing Flexivans (containers with separate wheels/bogies that required special flatcars) instead of conventional piggyback trailers.

After several money-losing years in the early 1970s, the Milwaukee voluntarily entered reorganization once again on December 19, 1977. The major result of the 1977 reorganization was the amputation of everything west of Miles City, Mont., to concentrate on what became known as the “Milwaukee II” system linking Chicago, Kansas City, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Duluth (on Burlington Northern rails from St. Paul), and Louisville (but no longer Omaha).

By 1983 the Milwaukee’s system consisted of the Chicago–Twin Cities main line; Chicago–Savanna–Kansas City; Chicago–Louisville (almost entirely on Conrail and Seaboard System rails), Milwaukee–Green Bay; New Lisbon–Tomahawk, Wis.; Savanna–La Crosse, along the west bank of the Mississippi; Marquette to Sheldon, Iowa, and Jackson, Minn.; Austin, Minn.–St. Paul; and St. Paul–Ortonville, Minn., plus a few branches.

Three roads vied for what remained of the Milwaukee: the Chicago & North Western, financially none too solid itself; Canadian National subsidiary Grand Trunk Western, with an eye toward creating a route between eastern and western Canada south of the Great Lakes; and Canadian Pacific subsidiary Soo Line.

September 7, 2021

Fallen Flag — the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad

Filed under: Business, History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

This month’s Classic Trains fallen flag feature is the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad by J.W. Swanberg. The New Haven was created in 1872 by a merger between the New York and New Haven Railroad (began operation in 1849) and the Hartford and New Haven Railroad (operations from 1844 onward). The combined entity owned main line track from New York City through its Connecticut namesake cities to Springfield Massachusetts. With its own trackage and lines leased from other New England railways along with steamship companies and local trolley lines, it largely monopolized freight and passenger traffic south of the competing Boston and Albany line. As the Wikipedia entry describes the company’s early growth:

Around the beginning of the 20th century, New York investors led by J. P. Morgan gained control, and in 1903 installed Charles S. Mellen as President. Charles Francis Murphy’s New York Contracting and Trucking company was awarded a $6 million contract in 1904 to build rail lines in the Bronx for the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad. An executive at the railroad said the contract was awarded to avoid friction with New York City’s Tammany Hall political machine. In response to this contract, the New York State Legislature amended the city’s charter so that franchise-awarding power was removed from the city council and given to the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, which only recently became defunct in 1989. Morgan and Mellen achieved a complete monopoly of transportation in southern New England, purchasing other railroads and steamship and trolley lines. More than 100 independent railroads eventually became part of the system before and during these years, reaching 2,131 miles at its 1929 peak. Substantial improvements to the system were made during the Mellen years, including electrification between New York and New Haven. […] Morgan and Mellen went further and attempted to acquire or neutralize competition from other railroads in New England, including the New York Central’s Boston and Albany Railroad, the Rutland Railroad, the Maine Central Railroad, and the Boston and Maine Railroad. But the Morgan-Mellen expansion left the company overextended and financially weak.

In 1914, 21 directors and ex-directors of the railroad were indicted for “conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce by acquiring the control of practically all the transportation facilities of New England.”

J.W. Swanberg carries on the story of the railroad’s woes during and after the First World War:

The New Haven was a financial powerhouse at the start of the 20th century, but from 1903 to 1913, the road was driven to near bankruptcy under President Charles S. Mellen and financier J.P. Morgan. One gain in this period, though, was control of the Central New England Railway, which included the Hudson River bridge at Poughkeepsie, N.Y., and the link to Maybrook and nearby Campbell Hall. This was New Haven’s gateway to the west, also served by trunk lines Erie; New York, Ontario & Western; and bridge lines Lehigh & Hudson River and Lehigh & New England.

World War I government control and the Roaring 1920s boom times saved the New Haven, but not enough to survive the Great Depression, and bankruptcy came in 1935. World War II traffic allowed recovery and rebuilding, but soon all was lost by mismanagement and bankruptcy came again in 1961. The postwar New Haven faced not only highway and airline competition but also the almost total erosion of New England’s heavy industrial base. Just a shell of the once-mighty railroad was forced into a reluctant Penn Central on Jan. 1, 1969.

One of the line’s claim to fame was the early electrification program the New Haven embarked on in 1907:

“View of Typical Sectionalizing Bridge, Auto-Transformer Installation and Cable Runway May 2, 1914.”
Photo and original caption from Electric Railway Journal via Wikimedia Commons.

The New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad pioneered electrification of main line railroads using high-voltage, alternating current, single-phase overhead catenary. It electrified its mainline between Stamford, Connecticut, and Woodlawn, New York, in 1907, and extended the electrification to New Haven, Connecticut, in 1914. While single-phase AC railroad electrification has become commonplace, the New Haven’s system was unprecedented at the time of construction. The significance of this electrification was recognized in 1982 by its designation as a National Historic Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).

[…]

The New Haven’s system was extended across the Hell Gate Bridge to the New York Connecting Railroad upon the line’s construction. The system of electrification was an extension of the New Haven’s revised 11/22 kV autotransformer architecture. The original electrification extended from the New Haven’s main line, across the Hell Gate Bridge, to the Bay Ridge yard. The line south of Bowery Bay Junction was de-electrified in the 1950s. The line between New Rochelle and the Harold Interlocking was transferred to Amtrak in 1976 upon dissolution of Penn Central. The electrification system continued to be controlled as a portion of the ex-New Haven system until the 1987 conversion to 60 Hz operation.

When the New Haven main line was converted by Metro-North to 60 Hz operation, the Amtrak Hell Gate line was also converted, but as an isolated system powered from the Van Nest substation. Control of the catenary system was transferred from Cos Cob to the Load Dispatcher at New York Penn Station. Although conversion occurred subsequent to the PRR-era electrification, Amtrak substation numbers 45-47 were assigned for consistency with the rest of the PRR numbering scheme.

New Haven dual-power diesel-electric FL9 locomotive 2011 with train #138, a NYC – Pittsfield train, at South Norwalk, CT on October 13, 1968. The stub of the former branch to the docks is in the foreground.
Photo by Roger Puta via Wikimedia Commons.

July 8, 2021

Fallen Flag — the Illinois Central Railroad

Filed under: History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Illinois Central Herald from a 1937 Passenger timetable.

This month’s Classic Trains fallen flag feature is the Illinois Central Railroad by George Drury. Of course, to non-railfans, the line is almost certainly best known from Steve Goodman’s melancholy masterpiece “The City of New Orleans“, which was covered by Arlo Guthrie (and was his only top-40 hit). It was certainly the first time I remember hearing the name of the railroad, as the Guthrie version was in regular rotation on Toronto-area radio stations in the early 1970s. If you’re interested in the genesis of the song, there’s a September 2017 Trains article by Craig Sanders, but it’s paywalled unless you’re a subscriber to Kalmbach’s “trains.com Unlimited”. And there’s a grainy live performance by Goodman at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, N.J. in 1976 here.

The IC (nicknamed the “Main Line of Mid-America”) was originally incorporated in 1836 to build a rail connection from Cairo to Galena with a branch to Chicago, but didn’t receive federal support until 1850 and the company was finally granted a charter in 1851. The IC was the first “land grant” railroad in the United States, and prominent Illinois politicians were deeply involved in the railroad (Senator Stephen Douglas and future President Abraham Lincoln). The line was completed in 1856 and the “branch” to Chicago rapidly became the busiest portion of the line. After the Civil War, the IC expanded out of Illinois into Iowa and then by acquisition and consolidation eventually reached Louisville, Kentucky and New Orleans, Louisiana with many branches and secondary lines throughout the eastern half of the Mississippi valley. In the 1880s, the IC also expanded north and west, reaching locations in Wisconsin, South Dakota, and Nebraska by the end of the century.

During the 1880s, the IC came under the control of E.H. Harriman and as a result were one of the railroads that were involved in the union actions that ran from 1911 until 1915. The IC and the other Harriman-controlled railways had existing contracts with the individual trade unions representing workers on each line, but the unions hoped to force the railways to recognize a “System Federation” of the separate unions that would negotiate as a single unit. The IC refused and hired strikebreakers to fill the positions vacated by striking union members — including many African-American men who would not normally have been allowed to work in those positions on southern railways. Sporadic violence in 1911 and 1912 resulted in the deaths of at least 12 men and 30 others were killed in a steam locomotive boiler explosion in San Antonio, Texas. It was generally seen as a failure by mid-1912, but the strike didn’t formally end until 1915. The unions tried again in 1922 in the Great Railroad Strike, which was an even larger attempt by the unions to operate as a single bargaining unit, and another ten people were killed during the conflict but it lasted only a couple of months and failed to achieve its aims.

Although the major portions of the system were in place by World War 1, there were some additional lines added through to the 1960s, merging or acquiring control of lines like the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley, the Gulf & Ship Island, the Chicago, St. Louis & New Orleans, the Alabama & Vicksburg, and the Vicksburg, Shreveport & Pacific. George Drury picks up the story in mid-century:

In the 1950s and early ’60s IC purchased several short lines: former interurban Waterloo, Cedar Falls & Northern (jointly with the Rock Island through a new subsidiary, Waterloo Railroad); Tremont & Gulf in Louisiana; Peabody Short Line, a coal-hauler at East St. Louis, Ill.; and Louisiana Midland.

In 1968 Illinois Central acquired the western third — Nashville to Hopkinsville, Ky. — of the Tennessee Central when that financially ailing line was split among IC, Louisville & Nashville, and Southern.

Illinois Central Gulf

Illinois Central and parallel Gulf, Mobile & Ohio merged on August 10, 1972, to create the Illinois Central Gulf Railroad, a wholly owned subsidiary of Illinois Central Industries. GM&O was a likely merger partner for Illinois Central, as it was a north-south railroad through much the same area as IC. As part of the merger, ICG took over three Mississippi lines: Bonhomie & Hattiesburg Southern; Columbus & Greenville; and Fernwood, Columbia & Gulf.

The north-south lines of ICG’s map resembled an hourglass. Driving across Mississippi or Illinois from east to west, you could encounter as many as eight ICG lines. The former IC system converged at Fulton, Ky., and the former GM&O main line was less than 10 miles west of Fulton at Cayce.

[…]

On Feb. 29, 1988, the railroad changed its name back to Illinois Central, having divested itself of nearly all the former GM&O routes it acquired in 1972, when it added “Gulf” to its name. At the end of 1988 the Whitman Corp. (formerly IC Industries) spun off the railroad, which then dropped “Gulf” from the name, and in August 1989 control of the railroad was gained by the Prospect Group, which formerly controlled spinoff MidSouth Rail.

IC managers eventually turned their eyes west, to the Chicago, Central & Pacific, which it had sold in 1985. It saw CC&P’s route as a source of grain traffic and perhaps a way to get some of the coal moving east from Wyoming. In June 1996 IC purchased the CC&P. The line remains active.

In February 1998 Canadian National Railway agreed to purchase the IC, creating a 19,000-mile railroad. CN absorbed IC in July 1999, and IC lost its own identity within the CN system.

The Illinois Central’s City of New Orleans at Kankakee, Illinois in August, 1964. The train is led by EMD E7 #4017.
Photo by Lawrence and David Barera via Wikimedia Commons.

June 4, 2021

Fallen Flag — the Central Railroad of New Jersey

Filed under: History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

This month’s Classic Trains fallen flag feature is the Central Railroad of New Jersey (CNJ) by Peter Brill. The first of the two original lines that merged to become the CNJ was granted a charter as the Elizabethtown and Somerville Railroad to create a connection from Elizabeth, New Jersey to Somerville, including a ferry into New York City. The charter was dated 9 February, 1831 and the line was completed in 1842. The Somerville and Easton received a charter in 1847 to connect the existing Elizabethtown line to Easton, Pennsylvania and the new connecting line was leased by the Elizabethtown and Somerville in 1848 and then purchased outright in 1849. The combined railroads merged as the Central Railroad of New Jersey in February of that year.

Map of the extent and connections of the Centrail Railroad of New Jersey in 1893.
Poor’s Manual of the Railroads of the United States via Wikimedia Commons.
Click to see full-size image.

At its peak, the Central Railroad of New Jersey, the self-proclaimed “Big Little Railroad”, operated only about 700 route-miles, but in keeping with its densely populated region, totaled over 1,900 miles of track, two-thirds in New Jersey. CNJ’s Central Division extended from Jersey City to Phillipsburg, on the Delaware River. The Lehigh & Susquehanna Division (later Central Railroad of Pennsylvania, then the Penn Division) went west from Easton, Pa., to Allentown, then north to Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. The Southern Division, from Red Bank to Bridgeton/Bayside, was reached from Elizabethport via CNJ’s Perth Amboy Branch and the New York & Long Branch.

Although “little” in geographic span — it’s just 191 miles from Jersey City to Scranton — CNJ was “big” in traffic density. Between Jersey City and Raritan, 35 miles of commuter territory, four to six main tracks handled 300 daily commuter trains carrying 35,000 riders plus local freights, longer-distance passenger and freight trains, and, east of Bound Brook Junction, through Baltimore & Ohio/Reading traffic from Philadelphia and beyond.

[…]

CNJ’s evolution from tidewater connection to competing anthracite road coincided with LV [Lehigh Valley] and DL&W [Delaware, Lackawanna & Western] developing their own routes to New York Harbor. CNJ originally based its Pennsylvania operations in Mauch Chunk (now called Jim Thorpe). Narrow-gauge “lokies” worked the Wanamie Colliery on the Nanticoke Branch until 1967, and CNJ hauled the anthracite to Ashley’s Huber Breaker. In 1892, Central States Dispatch, a fast freight route on B&O, Western Maryland, RDG [Reading], CNJ, Lehigh & Hudson River, and New Haven, commenced via Allentown Yard.

In 1893, America’s first automatic, motor-operated semaphore signal was installed on CNJ at Black Dan’s Cut east of Phillipsburg. Installation of twin McMyler car dumpers at Pier 18 in Jersey City in 1919 created CNJ’s foremost destination for anthracite and bituminous coal into the 1960s. In 1925, what is regarded as America’s first successful commercial diesel locomotive, CNJ 1000, a 300 h.p. box-cab, began a 27-year assignment at Bronx Terminal. The bridge over Newark Bay was replaced in 1926 by a 1.4-mile, 4-track, 2-span, lift-type drawbridge. In the 1930s, one of the country’s most modern traffic control towers was installed at Elizabethport to control the convergence of the multi-track Central Division main with the Newark and Perth Amboy branches. E’port also hosted CNJ’s main shops.

Two Blue Comet consists, Packard blue with gold lettering and window bands of Jersey cream, in 1929 introduced luxury coach service at no extra charge between Jersey City and Atlantic City. Later that year, The Bullet debuted similar service between Jersey City and Wilkes-Barre. Specially painted Pacifics handled both: royal and Packard blue with gold striping and lettering for the Comet and dark olive with gold striping and chromium trim for The Bullet. The latter ran only two years, but the Comet lasted until 1941.

CNJ entered a 10-year bankruptcy in 1939 while controlled by the Reading, which in turn was controlled by B&O. During World War II, the German submarine menace diverted eastbound oil products from tanker to tank car, and CNJ delivered up to 1,000 loads a day, half the New York area’s requirement, until pipelines were built. In 1944 CNJ became “Jersey Central Lines” and adopted the Statue of Liberty emblem.

Builder’s photo of CNJ 1000, the first diesel-electric switch engine built by ALCO in conjunction with Westinghouse for the electrical equipment and Ingersoll-Rand for the prime mover. Built 1924 and sold to CNJ in 1928. This unit was retired from active service in 1957.
Wikimedia Commons.

May 6, 2021

Fallen Flag — the Northern Pacific Railway

Filed under: Business, History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

This month’s Classic Trains fallen flag feature is the Northern Pacific Railway by George Drury. The NP was a government-authorized transcontinental line planned to run from a Great Lakes port to the Pacific Northwest. Its founding legislation was passed during the American Civil War but construction of the right of way didn’t begin until 1870 and the line was completed in September, 1883. The railway was granted up to 60 million acres in land grants, but eventually only claimed about 40 million acres (much of this land was already occupied or claimed by various First Nations tribal groups who — of course — were given no choice about having a railway built through their lands and many actively fought against the railway eventually requiring formal US Army protection for the surveying and building crews).

Despite the vast land grants, the costs of building the railway eventually drove Jay Cooke, the original financial backer, into bankruptcy which was one of the major triggers of the financial disaster known as the Panic of 1873. The economic impact was widespread and was known — until the 1930s — as the “Great Depression”, and the US economy took several years to resume growth while other industrialized countries suffered the effects for longer.

NP reorganized by converting the bonds to stock, and the Lake Superior & Mississippi was reorganized as the St. Paul & Duluth. In 1881 control of the NP was purchased by Henry Villard, who also controlled the Oregon Railway & Navigation Co. and the Oregon & California Railroad. On Sept. 8, 1883, NP drove a last spike at Gold Creek, Mont., near Garrison, completing a line from Duluth to Wallula Junction, Wash. Northern Pacific trains continued on the rails of the OR&N to Portland, where NP’s own line to Tacoma resumed (it crossed the Columbia River by ferry from Goble, Ore., to Kalama, Wash.).

Even before completing the line at Gold Creek, NP began constructing a direct line from Pasco, Wash., over the Cascade Range to Tacoma. The Puget Sound area was beginning to grow, and NP wanted to reach it with its own line rather than rely on OR&N. Indeed, soon after the last-spike ceremonies, Villard’s empire collapsed and OR&N became part of Union Pacific (Southern Pacific got the Oregon & California). The Pasco–Tacoma line opened in 1887, with temporary switchbacks carrying trains over Stampede Pass until the opening of Stampede Tunnel in May 1888.

To help populate the railway’s claimed lands, colonization offices were established in northern Europe in the mid-1880s to attract immigrants to settle and farm along the right of way. Many Americans of German or Scandinavian ancestry can trace their roots back to these programs, which generally offered very cheap package deals for transportation to the United States along with parcels of land and other inducements.

Detail from an 1885 Rand McNally publication showing a “Shipper’s Guide To All Points On And Connections To the Northern Pacific Railroad, Its Branches And Connecting Lines”
Original scan from the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the BPL via Wikimedia Commons.

In 1901 Northern Pacific and Great Northern gained control of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy by jointly purchasing approximately 98 percent of its capital stock. That same year James J. Hill and J. P. Morgan formed the Northern Securities Co. as a holding company for NP and Great Northern. The U.S. Supreme Court dissolved Northern Securities in 1904. In 1905 the two roads organized the Spokane, Portland & Seattle, which was completed from Spokane through Pasco to Portland in 1908. GN and NP attempted consolidation in 1927, but the Interstate Commerce Commission made giving up control of the Burlington a requisite for approval, a condition the roads found unacceptable.

In October 1941 NP purchased the property of the Minnesota & International Railway (Brainerd to International Falls, Minn.), which it had controlled for a number of years.

In image, Northern Pacific was the most conservative of the three northern transcontinentals. (Great Northern was a prosperous, well-thought-out railroad; the Milwaukee Road was a brash newcomer.) Bulking large in NP’s freight traffic were wheat and lumber. In the 1920s and 1930s NP suffered from smaller than usual wheat crops and competition from ships for lumber moving to the East Coast. Ship competition decreased during World War II, and postwar prosperity brought an increase in building activity and population growth to the area NP served. NP was the oldest of the northern transcontinentals and had been instrumental in settling the northern plains. It served the populous areas of North Dakota, Montana, and Washington. Its slogan was “Main Street of the Northwest,” and its secondary passenger train of the 1950s and ’60s was the Mainstreeter. Its flagship was the North Coast Limited, launched in 1900.

In 1956 NP and Great Northern again studied merger of the two roads, the Burlington, and the Spokane, Portland & Seattle. In 1960 the directors of both roads approved the merger terms. On March 2, 1970, NP was merged into Burlington Northern along with Great Northern; Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; and Spokane, Portland & Seattle.

April 8, 2021

Fallen Flag — the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range Railway

Filed under: Business, History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

This month’s Classic Trains fallen flag feature is the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range Railway (DM&IR) by Steve Glischinski. The DM&IR was formed by the 1937 merger between the Duluth, Missabe and Northern Railway (DMN) and the Spirit Lake Transfer Railway and the 1938 further merger of the combined operation with the Duluth and Iron Range Road (D&IR) and the Interstate Transfer Railway. The D&IR had been founded in 1874 to transport iron ore from Tower, MN to Two Harbors, MN, eventually coming under the ownership of United States Steel Corporation in 1901.

The Merritt family of Minnesota (known as the “Seven Iron Brothers“) discovered a large iron ore deposit in the Mesabi Range and created the largest iron ore mine in the world (as of the 1890s) and tried to persuade the DMN to build a 70-mile rail connection to get their ore to harbour and out to the iron and steel foundries around the Great Lakes. The DMN was unwilling to commit, so the Merritt family borrowed money to build the line from, among other financiers, John D. Rockefeller. The line — called the Duluth, Missabe and Northern — got built and began operations in 1892, but the Merritts expanded too quickly at the wrong moment — the financial panic of 1893 — losing financial control and leaving ownership of both the mine and the railway in Rockefeller’s hands by 1894.

Charlemagne Tower sold the Duluth & Iron Range to Illinois Steel in 1887, which was succeeded by Federal Steel, then U.S. Steel. By 1901, both the D&IR and DM&N were under U.S. Steel control. USS upgraded both railroads with heavy rail and double track, ordered bigger locomotives and larger cars, and built sizeable shops and roundhouses at Proctor and Two Harbors.

In 1915 DM&N leased the Spirit Lake Transfer Railway, a link between DM&N at Adolph, near Proctor, and the Interstate Transfer Railway at Oliver, Wis., across from Steelton, Minn. The Interstate Transfer ran from Oliver to Itasca, in eastern Superior, giving the DM&N connections with large railroads including Northern Pacific, Chicago & North Western’s “Omaha Road”, and three members of the Canadian Pacific family: Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie (“Soo Line”); Wisconsin Central; and Duluth, South Shore & Atlantic.

DM&N and D&IR remained separate until January 1, 1930, when the DM&N leased the D&IR and consolidated operations. Then on July 1, 1937, the DM&N merged with the Spirit Lake Transfer to form the Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range Railway. DM&IR then acquired ownership of D&IR and Interstate Transfer, and they became part of the new corporation on March 22, 1938. Reminders of the two big predecessors remained in the DM&IR’s two operating divisions, named Iron Range and Missabe, made up primarily of the predecessors’ tracks.

The Great Depression drastically reduced ore traffic. In 1932, not a single all-ore train was run — the small amount of ore that had to be shipped was carried in mixed freights. World War II reversed the road’s fortunes, of course, and the postwar boom resulted in an even higher demand for ore, with an all-time tonnage record being set in 1953.

Missabe had minimal passenger service. Into the 1950s, handsome Pacifics pulled heavyweight steel RPOs and coaches, two with solarium observation sections. At the end of World War II, the Missabe still provided service between Duluth and Ely (Winton), and Duluth and Hibbing, with the Hibbing train connecting with one from Iron Junction to Virginia.

Duluth, Missabe & Iron Range M-3 locomotive no. 227.
Photo by “GavinTheGazelle” via Wikimedia Commons.

U.S. Steel spun off the DM&IR and its other ore railroads and shipping companies to subsidiary Transtar in 1988, selling majority control to the Blackstone Group. In 2001, DM&IR and other holdings were moved from Transtar to Great Lakes Transportation, fully owned by Blackstone, so for the first time in a century, DM&IR was no longer associated with U.S. Steel. On October 20, 2003, Canadian National announced it would buy Great Lakes Transportation, which also owned Bessemer & Lake Erie, Pittsburgh & Conneaut Dock Co. in Ohio, and Great Lakes Fleet, Inc. The purchase was finalized on May 10, 2004, and the independent Missabe Road vanished.

CN retired all but 10 of the SD40-3s, most of the SD38s, and all the rebuilt SD9s and 18s. Major locomotive work shifted from Proctor to other shops, and train dispatchers moved to Wisconsin, then Illinois. CN invested in new ore cars for the Missabe, gradually replacing those that dated to when steam still ruled the railroad. DM&IR existed on paper until December 31, 2011, when CN merged subsidiaries DM&IR and Duluth, Winnipeg & Pacific into Wisconsin Central.

March 4, 2021

Fallen Flag — the Seaboard Air Line Railroad

Filed under: History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Seaboard Air Line logos used in print advertising, circa 1900 (left) and 1916 (right).
Wikimedia Commons.

This month’s Classic Trains fallen flag feature is the Seaboard Air Line by Larry Goolsby. The railroad’s earliest antecedent was originally chartered in 1832 to build a rail line from Portsmouth, Virginia to Weldon, North Carolina, a port on the Roanoke River which flows into Albemarle Sound. The Portsmouth & Roanoke began operation in 1834 and changed its name to the Seaboard & Roanoke around 1838 after several financial reorganizations and refinancing efforts. In 1837, the first passenger fatalities in US railroad history occurred in a head-on collision between a eastbound lumber train hit the westbound passenger train from Portsmouth on 11 August. Three young women were killed in the accident, all members of the Ely family.

Along with most other railroads in the Confederate states, Virginian and North Carolinian railroads were seriously damaged physically in the fighting and became political footballs during the Reconstruction Era. In the 1880s, the Seaboard and Roanoke was one of several railroads merged to form the Seaboard Air Line Railway which extended from Virginia to Georgia. The name Seaboard Air Line was in use well before the legal merger as a marketing device to help attract traffic.

The “Air Line” name was often used by railroads of the period to denote a route supposedly “as straight as the crow flies.” It was a reasonably direct run from Portsmouth to Weldon, but the Air Line label would be more than hype when in the 1880s Seaboard acquired a line linking Hamlet and Wilmington, N.C., which included a 79-mile tangent track, longest in the U.S.

As the 19th century closed, the SAL system came under control of a group led by John Skelton Williams, who added a line from Richmond, Va., to Weldon, and acquired the Florida Central & Peninsular, transforming what had been a Portsmouth–Atlanta carrier into a north-south line. In 1900, the various SAL roads were incorporated as Seaboard Air Line Railway with its coastal main line from Richmond going through Raleigh, Columbia, and Savannah to Jacksonville and Tampa.

1896 route map of the Seaboard Air Line.
Wikimedia Commons.

While the World War II years strained SAL’s resources the railroad shouldered the load with new EMD FTs, secondhand steam engines from Western Maryland and Chicago & North Western, and installation of block signals and centralized traffic control over large portions of its main line. Wartime income helped the carrier emerge from receivership in 1946 as Seaboard Air Line Railroad.

High-profile wrecks, several involving passenger trains, spurred quick postwar completion of the signaling and modernization campaign. SAL’s earliest CTC installation had started south from Richmond in 1941. By the early 1950s, signals covered most mainline mileage, keeping the operation competitive with its double-tracked neighbor Atlantic Coast Line.

Seaboard added more streamlined cars from Budd in 1947 and lightweight sleepers from several builders beginning in 1949. The Silver Star name was given to what had been a second section of the Meteor, and the two “Silver Fleet” members held down the first-class New York–Florida trade. The Silver Comet was added to the New York–Birmingham route. Seaboard continued to maintain its premier trains to high standards into the 1960s, proudly calling itself “The Route of Courteous Service.” The Meteor and Star names survive on Amtrak’s New York–Miami route.

As with so many North American railways after World War II, the Seaboard faced stiff competition not only from direct competitors like the Atlantic Coast Line, but also from trucks diverting freight onto the interstate highway system but also from airlines whisking its passengers more rapidly to holiday destinations in Florida. The economic situation was clear in the mid-1950s and Seaboard applied for government approval to merge operations with rival Atlantic Coast in 1958, but did not get through the legal obstacle course until 1967 when the merger was formalized as the new Seaboard Coast Line Railroad.

January 21, 2021

Fallen Flag — the New York Central System (part 2)

Filed under: History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

This month’s Classic Trains fallen flag feature is the history of the New York Central System by George Drury (part 1 is linked here). The New York Central was one of the biggest and most economically powerful American railways for over a century before the postwar boom turned into the economic disaster of the 1960s and 70s, as passengers and freight switched from rail to road — partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded Interstate Highway System — and air and the decline of northeastern heavy industry and mining hit the established eastern railroads very hard:

The New York Central System was the largest of the eastern trunk systems from the standpoint of mileage and second only to the Pennsylvania in revenue. It served most of the industrial part of the country, and its freight tonnage was exceeded only by the coal-carrying railroads. In addition it was a major passenger railroad, with perhaps two-thirds the number of passengers as the Pennsylvania, but NYC’s average passenger traveled one-third again as far as Pennsy’s. NYC did not share as fully in the post-World War II prosperity because of rising labor costs, material costs, and an expensive improvement program, especially for passenger service.

During 1946–47 Chesapeake & Ohio purchased a block of NYC stock, becoming the road’s largest stockholder. Robert R. Young gained control of the Central and became its chairman in 1954 as part of a maneuver to merge it with C&O. One of his first acts was to put Alfred E. Perlman in charge of the NYC.

Under Perlman NYC slimmed its physical plant, reducing long stretches of four-track line to two tracks under centralized traffic control, and developed an aggressive freight marketing department. At the same time NYC’s passenger operations were de-emphasized. On December 3, 1967, just before NYC and Pennsy merged, the Central reduced its passenger service to a skeleton, combining its New York–Chicago, New York–Detroit, New York–Toronto, and Boston–Chicago services into a single train and dropping all train names (including that of the legendary 20th Century Limited) except for, curiously, that of the Chicago–Cincinnati James Whitcomb Riley.

The Central’s archrival was the Pennsylvania Railroad. West of Buffalo and Pittsburgh the two systems duplicated each other at almost every major point; east of those cities the two hardly touched. Both had physical plant not being used to capacity (NYC was in better shape); both had a heavy passenger business; neither was earning much money. In 1957 NYC and Pennsy announced merger talks.

The initial industry reaction was utter surprise. Every merger proposal for decades had tried to balance the Central against the Pennsy and create two, three, or four more-or-less-equal systems in the east. Traditionally PRR had been allied with Norfolk & Western and Wabash; NYC with Baltimore & Ohio, Reading, and maybe the Lackawanna; and everyone else swept up with Erie and Nickel Plate. Tradition also favored end-to-end mergers rather than those of parallel roads.

Planning and justifying the merger took nearly ten years, during which time the eastern railroad scene changed radically, in large measure because of the impending merger of NYC and PRR: Erie merged with Lackawanna, C&O acquired control of B&O, and N&W took in Virginian, Wabash, Nickel Plate, Pittsburgh & West Virginia, and Akron, Canton & Youngstown.

Tradition aside, though, the New York Central and the Pennsylvania merged on Feb. 1, 1968 to form Penn Central.

Pages 1-2 from the July 1962 publicity booklet produced by the Penn-Central Merger Information Committee to inform the public on issues concerning their proposed merger. This pages shows various statistics showing Eastern railroads in decline.
Wikimedia Commons.

January 7, 2021

Fallen Flag — the New York Central System

Filed under: History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

This month’s Classic Trains fallen flag feature is the first part of the history of the New York Central System by George Drury. The New York Central was one of the biggest and most economically powerful American railways for over a century before the postwar boom turned into the economic disaster of the 1960s and 70s, as passengers switched from rail to road and plane and the decline of northeastern heavy industry and mining hit the established eastern railroads very hard:

The New York Central was a large railroad, and it had several subsidiaries whose identity remained strong, not so much in cars and locomotives carrying the old name but in local loyalties: If you lived in Detroit, you rode to Chicago on the Michigan Central, not the New York Central; through the Conrail era and even now, the line across Massachusetts is still known as “the Boston & Albany.”

The streamlined steam locomotive New York Central Hudson No.5344 “Commodore Vanderbilt”, leaving Chicago’s LaSalle Street station pulling the NYC’s premier passenger traing, the 20th Century Limited, 22 February 1935.
Photo originally copyrighted International News Photos (copyright not renewed) via Wikimedia Commons

The system’s history is easier to digest in small pieces: first New York Central followed by its two major leased lines, Boston & Albany and Toledo & Ohio Central; then Michigan Central and Big Four (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis). By the mid-1960s NYC owned 99.8 percent of the stock of Michigan Central and more than 97 percent of the stock of the Big Four. NYC leased both on Feb. 1, 1930, but they remained separate companies to avoid the complexities of merger.

In broad geographic terms, the NYC proper was everything east of Buffalo plus a line from Buffalo through Cleveland and Toledo to Chicago (the former Lake Shore & Michigan Southern). NYC included the Ohio Central Lines (Toledo through Columbus to and beyond Charleston, W.Va.) and the Boston & Albany (neatly defined by its name). The Michigan Central was a Buffalo–Detroit–Chicago line and everything in Michigan north of that. The Big Four was everything south of NYC’s Cleveland–Toledo–Chicago line other than the Ohio Central.

The New York Central System included several controlled railroads that did not accompany NYC into the Penn Central merger. The most important of these were (with the proportion of NYC ownership in the mid-1960s):

  • Pittsburgh & Lake Erie (80 percent)
  • Indiana Harbor Belt (NYC, 30 percent; Michigan Central, 30 percent; Chicago & North Western, 20 percent; and Milwaukee Road, 20 percent)
  • Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo (NYC, 37 percent; MC, 22 percent; Canada Southern, 14 percent; and Canadian Pacific, 27 percent).

[…]

The New York & Harlem Railroad was incorporated in 1831 to build a line in Manhattan from 23rd Street north to 129th Street between Third and Eighth avenues (the railroad chose to follow Fourth Avenue). At first the railroad was primarily a horsecar system, but in 1840 the road’s charter was amended to allow it to build north toward Albany. In 1844 the rails reached White Plains and in January 1852 the New York & Harlem made connection with the Western Railroad (later Boston & Albany) at Chatham, N.Y., creating a New York–Albany rail route.

The towns along the Hudson River felt no need of a railroad, except during the winter when ice prevented navigation. Poughkeepsie interests organized the Hudson River Railroad in 1847. The railroad opened from a terminal on Manhattan’s west side all the way to East Albany. By then the road had leased the Troy & Greenbush, gaining access to a bridge over the Hudson at Troy. (A bridge at Albany was completed in 1866.)

By 1863 Cornelius Vanderbilt controlled the New York & Harlem and had a substantial interest in the Hudson River Railroad. In 1867 he obtained control of the New York Central, consolidating it with the Hudson River in 1869 to form the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad.

Vanderbilt wanted to build a magnificent terminal for the NYC&HR in New York. He chose as its site the corner of 42nd Street and Fourth Avenue on the New York & Harlem, the southerly limit of steam locomotive operation in Manhattan. Construction of Grand Central Depot began in 1869. The new depot was actually three separate stations serving the NYC&HR, the New York & Harlem, and the New Haven. Trains of the Hudson River line reached the New York & Harlem by means of a connecting track completed in 1871 along Spuyten Duyvil Creek and the Harlem River (they have since become a single waterway). That was the first of three Grand Centrals.

The Wikipedia page on the New York Central includes a good overview of the decline of the railway:

The New York Central, like many U.S. railroads, declined after the Second World War. Problems resurfaced that had plagued the railroad industry before the war, such as over-regulation by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which severely regulated the rates charged by the railroad, along with continuing competition from automobiles. These problems were coupled with even more formidable forms of competition, such as airline service in the 1950s that began to deprive NYC of its long-distance passenger trade. The Interstate Highway Act of 1956 helped create a network of efficient roads for motor vehicle travel through the country, enticing more people to travel by car, as well as haul freight by truck. The 1959 opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway adversely affected NYC freight business. Container shipments could now be directly shipped to ports along the Great Lakes, eliminating the railroads’ freight hauls between the east and the Midwest.

The NYC also carried a substantial tax burden from governments that saw rail infrastructure as a source of property tax revenues – taxes that were not imposed upon interstate highways. To make matters worse, most railroads, including the NYC, were saddled with a World War II-era tax of 15% on passenger fares, which remained until 1962, 17 years after the end of the war.

Robert R. Young: 1954–1958
In June 1954, management of the New York Central System lost a proxy fight in 1954 to Robert Ralph Young and the Alleghany Corporation he led.

Alleghany Corporation was a real estate and railroad empire built by the Van Sweringen brothers of Cleveland in the 1920s that had controlled the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) and the Nickel Plate Road. It fell under the control of Young and financier Allan Price Kirby during the Great Depression.

R.R. Young was considered a railroad visionary, but found the New York Central in worse shape than he had imagined. Unable to keep his promises, Young was forced to suspend dividend payments in January 1958. He committed suicide later that month.

Alfred E. Perlman: 1958–1968
After Young’s suicide, his role in NYC management was assumed by Alfred E. Perlman, who had been working with the NYC under Young since 1954. Despite the dismal financial condition of the railroad, Perlman was able to streamline operations and save the company money. Starting in 1959, Perlman was able to reduce operating deficits by $7.7 million, which nominally raised NYC stock to $1.29 per share, producing dividends of an amount not seen since the end of the war. By 1964 he was able to reduce the NYC long-term debt by nearly $100 million, while reducing passenger deficits from $42 to $24.6 million.

Perlman also enacted several modernization projects throughout the railroad. Notable was the use of Centralized Traffic Control (CTC) systems on many of the NYC lines, which reduced the four-track mainline to two tracks. He oversaw construction and/or modernization of many hump or classification yards, notably the $20-million Selkirk Yard which opened outside of Albany in 1966. Perlman also experimented with jet trains, creating a Budd RDC car (the M-497 Black Beetle) powered by two J47 jet engines stripped from a B-36 Peacemaker bomber as a solution to increasing car and airplane competition. The project did not leave the prototype stage.

Perlman’s cuts resulted in the curtailing of many of the railroad’s services; commuter lines around New York were particularly affected. In 1958–1959, service was suspended on the NYC’s Putnam Division in Westchester and Putnam counties, and the NYC abandoned its ferry service across the Hudson to Weehawken Terminal. This negatively impacted the railroad’s West Shore Line, which ran along the west bank of the Hudson River from Jersey City to Albany, which saw long-distance service to Albany discontinued in 1958 and commuter service between Jersey City and West Haverstraw, New York terminated in 1959. Ridding itself of most of its commuter service proved impossible due to the heavy use of these lines around metro New York, which government mandated the railroad still operate.

Many long-distance and regional-haul passenger trains were either discontinued or downgraded in service, with coaches replacing Pullman, parlor, and sleeping cars on routes in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. The Empire Corridor between Albany and Buffalo saw service greatly reduced with service beyond Buffalo to Niagara Falls discontinued in 1961. On December 3, 1967, most of the great long-distance trains ended, including the famed Twentieth Century Limited. The railroad’s branch line service off the Empire Corridor in upstate New York was also gradually discontinued, the last being its Utica Branch between Utica and Lake Placid, in 1965. Many of the railroad’s great train stations in Rochester, Schenectady, and Albany were demolished or abandoned. Despite the savings these cuts created, it was apparent that if the railroad was to become solvent again, a more permanent solution was needed.

December 17, 2020

Fallen Flag — the Ann Arbor Railroad

Filed under: History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

This month’s Classic Trains featured fallen flag is the Michigan-based Ann Arbor Railroad which operated rail services from Toledo, Ohio to Elberta and Frankfort, Michigan, along with lake ferry service across Lake Michigan to Manitowoc and Kewaunee, Wisconsin and Menominee and Manistique in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Robert I. Warrick provides an outline of the history of the line:

Ann Arbor No. 1, built in 1892 by Craig Shipbuilding Co. in Toledo, Ohio. She was destroyed in a fire on March 7, 1910 at Manitowoc, Wisconsin.
Photo from Bowling Green State University via Wikimedia Commons.

The Ann Arbor Railroad was as much a steamship line as a railroad. Built from Toledo, Ohio, northwest to Frankfort, Mich., it existed for one reason — to move freight in car ferries across Lake Michigan to bypass Chicago. From 1910 to 1968, “the Annie” operated 320 car ferry route-miles versus 292 miles of railroad. AA was at the forefront of car ferry design and innovation, from the first wooden-hulled vessels to the most advanced car ferry to ever sail Lake Michigan.

During the 1940s, up to six ferries made the round trip from Boat Landing, as AA called its yard in Elberta on the south side of Frankfort harbor, to two Wisconsin and two Michigan Upper Peninsula ports. The boats ran year-round on a tight schedule, timed to match with three pairs of scheduled Toledo freights, where AA interchanged with five trunk lines. Well-kept 2-8-2s powered those short, fast trains across AA’s rolling profile until 1950, when Alco FA2s took over.

[…]

The Eastern mergers of the 1960s ultimately doomed the old Ann Arbor. As planning for Penn Central went on, the Norfolk & Western merged with Wabash, Nickel Plate, and two smaller roads in 1964. N&W wanted no part of the Ann Arbor and its costly ferries, so AA was foisted off on DT&I, which was profitable by the 1960s.

With ICC approval, DT&I took over the Ann Arbor on August 31, 1963, and soon replaced the tired FA2s with 10 GP35s, riding on Alco trucks and painted in DT&I orange with large “Ann Arbor” lettering. DT&I’s GPs often mixed with the Annie’s.

DT&I had ferry Wabash refitted, changed her name to City of Green Bay, and loaned AA $2.5 million to rebuild Ann Arbor No. 7. The railroad renamed No. 7 Viking, lengthened it, installed four EMD 2,500 h.p. 567 diesels. But even with the bigger boats, capacity remained an issue as car sizes increased. AA was losing money. First the ferry route to Manistique, Mich. (and AA subsidiary Manistique & Lake Superior), was discontinued, then the one to Menominee, Mich.

Ann Arbor’s fate was sealed. A firm was hired to liquidate Pennsylvania Company assets, including AA and DT&I. Ann Arbor defaulted on the loan for the Viking on November 1, 1972, and filed for bankruptcy on October 15, 1973, leading to AA’s inclusion with other bankrupts in the Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973 that resulted in Conrail.

November 5, 2020

Fallen Flag — the New York, Ontario and Western Railway

Filed under: Business, History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

This month’s Classic Trains featured fallen flag is the New York, Ontario and Western, which ran from Oswego on the south shore of Lake Ontario down into the New York City megalopolis. Sadly, the line is best remembered as the only Class 1 US railway to be completely abandoned. John R. Taibi outlines the history of the NYO&W from formation to abandonment in 1957:

Preserved NYO&W General Electric 44-ton switcher number 104 preserved at the Southeastern Railway Museum in Duluth, GA.
Photo by Harvey Henkelmann via Wikimedia Commons.

The New York, Ontario & Western Railway struggled to find its place among the many transportation systems serving New York City, but in the end it was able only to secure a place in history as the first Class I railroad to be abandoned in entirety. Despite this unenviable status, “the O&W,” as it was known, did endear itself to the communities along its line. After all, it was the carrier that had brought boxcars full of prosperity to every community along the line during its 76-year life.

Begun on January 21, 1880, the O&W set a goal of improving the Oswego–New York corridor, as well as the branches to New Berlin, Delhi, and Ellenville, N.Y., it had inherited from the New York & Oswego Midland. The O&W developed a new entrance to Gotham from Middletown, N.Y., that ran to Cornwall on the Hudson River, thence to Weehawken, N.J., by rights on the New York, West Shore & Buffalo Railway (later New York Central).

[…]

As it improved its physical characteristics, the O&W also acquired modern motive power to haul its numerous coal, milk, passenger, and general freight trains. Where previously Camelback 4-4-0s, 2-6-0s, and 2-8-0s were as common as the road’s wooden coaches and country depots, a corps of end-cab locomotives helped usher in the new era. E-class Ten-Wheelers (1911), W-class Consolidations (1910-11), X-class 2-10-2 “Bull Mooses” (1915), and Y-class Mountains (1922 and ’29) provided the power for passenger trains to the Catskills, milk trains to Gotham, and coal trains to Oswego, Cornwall, and Weehawken. Still, many Camelbacks worked into the mid-1940s.

This familiar, widely circulated O&W map was created by cartographer Crawford C. Anderson.
Classic Trains.

[…]

Dieselization was hoped to be a savior, and under [O&W bankruptcy trustee, Frederick E.] Lyford’s direction a handful of GE 44-ton switchers arrived in 1941. Nine two-unit EMD FTs came in 1945 and were put into fast merchandise service between Scranton and Maybrook, and Scranton and Norwich. Lyford’s successors in 1948 acquired additional F3 and NW2 diesels, enough to banish steam locomotives from service by that summer.

By that time, though, O&W’s accumulated losses amounted to $38 million. It was beyond the ability of trustees, the reorganization court, and diesel locomotives to extricate the carrier from financial ruin. Nevertheless, passenger trains from Weehawken to Walton (then only to Roscoe) kept running until mail contracts gave out in 1950; the service was suspended in September 1953. Although milk and coal trains were a memory, gray-yellow-and-orange diesel locomotives soldiered on, leading a dwindling number of ever-shorter freight trains.

By the mid-1950s, the reorganization court — which had been searching for a buyer for the road now truly earning another of its nicknames, the “Old & Weary” — was advocating total abandonment. Additionally, the U.S. government was suing for taxes and retirement payments that were in arrears, and New York state began planning on how best to use the O&W right of way for highway improvements.

October 8, 2020

Fallen Flag — The Pacific Electric Railway

Filed under: Business, History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

This month’s Classic Trains featured fallen flag is southern California’s iconic Pacific Electric Railway Company, whose streetcars, interurbans, and buses served the vast area in and around Los Angeles and San Bernardino from 1901 until the passenger services were sold off in 1953. The electric service was converted to bus and the last electric rail line was discontinued in 1961. At its peak in the 1920s the “Red Cars” service was said to be the largest electric railway system in the entire world.

G. Mac Sebree covers the origins of the line in the late nineteenth century:

The story begins in 1895, when a line was completed from Los Angeles to Pasadena; a mere 10 years later, the system was virtually complete. To a great degree, PE was the brainchild of Henry Huntington, nephew of one of the Central Pacific’s “Big Four,” Collis P. Huntington. An active real-estate promoter, Henry needed the Big Red Cars and the transportation they provided to help sell lots and homes in the hinterlands.

His uncle’s Southern Pacific took control of the PE in 1911 in a deal that left the Los Angeles Railway, the narrow-gauge intracity system, in the nephew’s hands. The PE was built to standard gauge, and SP saw a brilliant future in freight for the interurban.

Pacific Electric route map.
Original data from http://sharemap.org/public/Los_Angeles_Pacific_Electric_Railways_(Red_Cars) via Wikimedia Commons.

Interurbans were not considered Class I railroads (or any other class — they were not “steam railroads”), but from the very start, PE was big business. The California Railroad Commission said the property was worth $100 million in Depression dollars. Atypically for an interurban, the system served as a gathering network for carload freight shipments from citrus groves, manufacturing plants, oil refineries, warehouses, and the harbor at San Pedro. The three line-haul railroads serving southern California — Santa Fe, Union Pacific, and especially SP — depended on the Pacific Electric to some degree.

Yet in its heyday, PE carried huge numbers of passengers. As late as 1953, 50 percent of its revenue came from riders — but absolutely none of its profit. An all-time list shows that PE operated 143 distinct passenger routes. Despite the so-called “Great Merger of 1911,” in which local and interurban services were supposedly separated, the heaviest PE passenger lines largely served the L.A. urban area. An example was the street-running L.A.–Hollywood–Beverly Hills line, in which two-car trains rumbled down Hollywood Boulevard at 10-minute intervals.

At one time or another, PE single-truck Birney cars plied local lines in Pasadena, Long Beach, Santa Monica, Redlands, Santa Ana, and San Pedro, although the 1920s were not far along before management sought to sell off or abandon these albatrosses.

After World War 2, the writing was on the wall for the Red Cars, as urban expansion and greatly increased car ownership cut at the economic basis for rail passenger service in southern California, especially as the new freeways were built.

After the war, though, things went downhill rapidly. As soon as buses were available, Pacific Electric began wholesale rail passenger-service abandonments. The new freeways were regarded as the rapid transit of the future. PE President Oscar Smith saw one possibility for saving rail service — if the state would pay. Just before the war, a short section of freeway between Hollywood and the San Fernando Valley had been built, with the PE tracks relocated to the center of the new highway.

Why not replicate this all over the basin? The PE would cooperate, but public officials turned a deaf ear, and that was that. Freight service, meanwhile, prospered, but by the mid-1950s, PE began replacing its electric locomotives and box motors with diesels (a few steam locomotives also had been used during the war). Over the years, PE rostered about 100 electric locomotives and at least 75 box motors — big business, indeed.

In 1953, PE sold its passenger service (four rail lines out of the 6th and Main station, two out of Subway Terminal, and many bus lines) to Metropolitan Coach Lines. The Metropolitan Transit Authority, first formed in 1951, bought MCL on March 3, 1958, and the end for electric passenger service came in 1961. SP continued the freight work with diesels, and merged PE away on August 13, 1965. Today under the Union Pacific shield, a good bit of the old PE freight lines remain in service, unique survivors, busier than ever.

A veteran Pacific Electric “Big Red Car” already lettered for successor Metropolitan Coach Lines in the 1950s.
Photo by Voogd075 via Wikimedia Commons.

September 3, 2020

Fallen Flag — The Great Northern Railway

Filed under: Business, Cancon, History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

This month’s Classic Trains featured fallen flag is an American railway that definitely deserved to call itself “great”, James J. Hill’s Great Northern Railway. Hill was noteworthy as the only “Robber Baron” of that era who was scrupulous in avoiding government entanglements (including grants, loans, subsidies, and other forms of money-with-political-strings-attached), building his entire railway system using private funds and rational profit-oriented economic decision-making (the other transcontinental lines often over-built to claim higher subsidies or added money-losing branch lines to please powerful politicians). The result was that when economic hard times hit the railway business, his was the only transcontinental that never needed to declare bankruptcy.

In an earlier post, Dane Stuhlsatz summarized the GN’s engineering:

Hill’s line […] was methodically surveyed and built, on the shortest routes possible, with the least gradient possible, and using the best steel and other materials on the market at the time. Rather than political largess, Hill made his decisions based on profit and loss. But, for all the efficiency that Hill built into his line — he was able to transport across the country faster, cheaper, and with less maintenance costs than could the UP and CP — arguably the most important aspect for the viability of his business was the freedom to conduct business untethered by the strings that accompanied government subsidies.

Route map of the Great Northern Railway, circa 1920. Red lines are Great Northern trackage; dotted lines are other railroads.
Map by Elkman via Wikimedia Commons.

George Drury outlines the origins of the railway:

In 1857, the Minnesota & Pacific Railroad was chartered to build a line from Stillwater, Minnesota, on the St. Croix River, through St. Paul and St. Cloud to St. Vincent, in the northwest corner of the state. The company defaulted after completing a roadbed between St. Paul and St. Cloud, Minnesota, and its charter was taken over by the St. Paul & Pacific Railroad, which ran its first train between St. Paul and St. Anthony (now Minneapolis) in 1862.

For financial reasons the railroads were reorganized as the First Division of the St. Paul & Pacific. Both StP&P companies were soon in receivership, and Northern Pacific, with which the StP&P was allied, went bankrupt in the Panic of 1873.

Canadian-born “Robber Baron” James J. Hill (1838-1916) in 1914.

In 1878 James J. Hill and an associate, George Stephen, acquired the two St. Paul & Pacific companies and reorganized them as the St. Paul, Minneapolis & Manitoba Railway (“the Manitoba”). By 1885 the company had 1,470 miles of railroad and extended west to Devils Lake, North Dakota. In 1886 Hill organized the Montana Central Railway to build from Great Falls, Montana, through Helena to Butte, and in 1888 the line was opened, creating in conjunction with the StPM&M a railroad from St. Paul to Butte.

In 1881 Hill took over the 1856 charter of the Minneapolis & St. Cloud Railroad. He first used its franchises to build the Eastern Railway of Minnesota from Hinckley, Minnesota, to Superior, Wisconsin, and Duluth. Its charter was liberal enough that he chose it as the vehicle for his line to the Pacific. He renamed the road the Great Northern Railway; it then leased the Manitoba and assumed its operation.

[…]

Even before completion of the route from St. Paul, the Great Northern opened a line along the shore of Puget Sound between Seattle and Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1891. In the years that followed, Hill pushed a number of lines north across the international boundary into the mining area of southern British Columbia in a running battle with Canadian Pacific. In 1912 GN traded its line along the Fraser River east of Vancouver to Canadian Northern for trackage rights into Winnipeg.

Great Northern gradually withdrew from British Columbia after Hill’s death. In 1909 the Manitoba Great Northern Railway purchased most of the property of the Midland Railway of Manitoba (lines from the U.S. border to Portage la Prairie and to Morden), leaving the Midland, which was jointly controlled by GN and NP, with terminal properties in Winnipeg. The Manitoba Great Northern disposed of its rail lines in 1927. They were later abandoned.

Postcard photo of the Great Northern Railway’s “Empire Builder” streamliner between Everett and Seattle, Washington, circa 1963.
Great Northern Railway postcard via Wikimedia Commons.

The Great Northern and Northern Pacific lines agreed to a merger in 1901 (both lines were controlled by Hill) but the plan was vetoed by the Interstate Commerce Commission. A second attempt in the 1920s after Hill’s death was again turned down by the regulator unless the combined company divested ownership of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy which was both railways’ connection from Minneapolis to Chicago. It was only on the final attempt in 1970 that the deal gained the government’s grudging approval and the Great Northern, Northern Pacific, and CB&Q merged to form the Burlington Northern.

August 6, 2020

Fallen flag — The Lehigh and Hudson River Railway

Filed under: History, Railways, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

This month’s Classic Trains featured fallen flag is a northeastern railway I didn’t know much about, the Lehigh and Hudson River. If you asked me to complete the phrase “Lehigh and …”, I’d most likely have said “New England”, which was a larger operation but is perhaps only remembered now as the second major American railway to file for abandonment after the New York, Ontario & Western. The L&HR earned its keep primarily as a bridge line, with additional revenues from online anthracite coal mines. From the original founding in 1881, it operated until it was incorporated into Conrail in 1976.

L&HR’s origins date to 1860, when arrival of the New York & Erie Railroad, at Greycourt, New York, 10 miles north of Warwick, prompted construction of the Warwick Valley Railroad under the leadership of Grinnell Burt. The Warwick Valley operated as a 6-foot-gauge feeder to the same-gauge NY&E, using the big road’s equipment for two decades. Around 1880, WV assumed its own operations, was standard-gauged, and built the 11-mile Wawayanda Railroad, which tapped agricultural and mineral sources at McAfee, New Jersey. Further extension southward soon followed.

Two projected competitive lines were combined as the Lehigh & Hudson River Railroad, extending from a Pennsylvania Railroad connection at Belvidere, New Jersey, on the Delaware River, to Hamburg, New Jersey, where three miles of isolated Sussex Railroad track linked it to the Warwick Valley. In 1882 the extensions were folded into the 61-mile Lehigh & Hudson River Railway.

In addition to the New York & Erie’s mainline business at Greycourt, its Newburgh Branch provided access to Hudson River carferries crossing to the New York & New England’s Fishkill Landing. Anthracite coal, particularly from mines of affiliate Lehigh Coal & Navigation, was a major eastbound commodity. Anticipating completion of the Poughkeepsie Bridge a few miles upstream, the Orange County Railroad built north of Greycourt to connect with the New York, Ontario & Western at Burnside in 1890. Via trackage rights, this provided a first connection with the Central New England & Western at Campbell Hall, New York. Within a year, the Orange County was extended from Burnside to CNE’s new Maybrook yard.

Simultaneously, trackage rights were obtained from the Pennsy over 13 miles of its Belvidere-Delaware Division (“Bel-Del”) to Phillipsburg, New Jersey. There, disconnected subsidiaries undertook bridging the Delaware to access Easton, Pennsylvania, and the Jersey Central and Lehigh Valley. The bridge also opened in 1890, creating a three-state route of about 85 miles. The L&HR thus fulfilled the prescient vision of the line’s 1861 directors, who reported, “It was well understood by those … promoting the construction of the Warwick Valley Railroad, that in all probability it would be but a link in a great chain destined to be one of the most important thoroughfares, and to effect an important influence upon the commerce and manufacturers of an extensive section of our country …” Additional links soon extended the chain of this “important thoroughfare.”

The Lehigh and Hudson River Railway bridge over the Delaware River between Easton, Pennsylvania and Phillipsburg, New Jersey. Easton, the Lehigh River Dam feeding the Delaware Canal, and the Northampton Street Bridge are in the background.
Photo by Zeete via Wikimedia Commons.

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