1970s USRA !!

[Spikre]

there seems to be some confusion on Who was under this Entity,
and Who wasn't.
B&M - never joined,never under their providence.
D&H - never joined,but thru NY State did get some funds they shouldn't have.
Providence & Worchester -- stayed out and actually picked up some lines after CR day.
EL -- was the last major RR to join,and then got the shaft from them.
Reading -- joined early when Chessie wouldn't bail them out.
Lehigh Valley -- joined as there was no way they could survive indepently.
CNJ -- joined after Chessie stopped funding them.
Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines -- had to join,no chance of surviving Independently.
Penn Central -- actually had too much influence on USRA.
Ironton -- shouldn't have joined as they weren't Bankrupt.
Buffalo Creek -- shouldn't have joined as they weren't Bankrupt.
Niagara Junction -- shouldn't have joined as they weren't Bankrupt.
Ann Arbor -- should have joined,but didn't because Michigan kept them out.
there were other Paper Roads that joined,but wont list them,too many in the
PRR/PC orbit.
so what this boils down to is Only Roads under USRA got Funds or Locos and freight
equipment thru the USRA.
D&H being an exception of getting Funds,Locos and cars at various times in the 70s.
most of the cars and locos came after 4/1/76,but the Funds came earlier.
EL had GP38-2s and U23Bs canncelled after pannicking and joining USRA around 1974,they
could have made it as B&M did,but they decided not to.
Spikre

[PennCentral]

Spikre,


The D&H was owned by the N&W starting in 1968. The USRA also funded the D&H as a (weak) hedge against being responsible for creating a complete railroad monopoly with Conrail. The expanded D&H allowed them to point and say "look, Conrail isn't a monopoly. The D&H is a competing railroad....."


- Ironton -- jointly owned by the Lehigh Valley and the Reading and they were bankrupt.

- Buffalo Creek -- formed by the Lehigh Valley and a predecessor of the Erie then to EL, both still bankrupt.

- Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines -- wholly owned by the Penn Central and the Reading. Both also bankrupt.

- Niagara Junction - jointly owned or controlled by.....the Erie Lackawanna and Lehigh Valley and...well, you know....


You see the pattern here? None of the roads you mention were truly stand alone, independent railroads. They were wholly owned subsidiaries of very bankrupt railroads. Do you have a measure of how profitable these operations were? Did they generate a profit of $5.00 or $5,000,000? Profitable is relative. Profitable enough is the question. Companies abandon products or entire market segments all the time because they're profitable but not profitable ENOUGH. I suspect that these little railroads weren't profitable enough to bother with.

The whole purpose of Conrail was to take over the railroad operations from the various bankrupt corporations, relieving them of the financial burdens of owning railroad operating companies and converting the corporations to solvent property holding companies while at the same time attempting to create a profitable railroad system. THAT was the PURPOSE of Conrail; to preserve rail service to the most densely populated portion of the nation and to prevent financial collapse that affected the railroads from spreading further into other sectors that the parent corporations were involved with. The laws governing railroads at that time did not allow the corporations to abandon enough unprofitable portions of their railroads so they were stuck. Look how quickly the laws were changed when the gov't was on the hook for Conrail. The axe came out quickly and Conrail chopped and chopped and chopped until there was little left but profitable east-west trunks.

You can probably successfully argue both sides of the argument about Conrail being the right or wrong way to fix the problems. My argument will always come back to the fact that the antiquated regulations governing railroads did not change substantially until the government found itself responsible for all the railroads that wound up in Conrail. I'm not sure the laws would have changed as quickly as they did if it wasn't for this single fact.


Jason

[Spikre]

Jason,
originally there were to be 2 Dereco's.
Dereco A was to be the Chessie Roads, which would have included
Reading, CNJ, B&OCTT, CSS&SB, SIRT, P-RSL,and possibly Ironton and LV.
after the N&W - C&O Merger was called off, Chessie forgot about
their Dereco.
this may have been Dereco A.
N&W did implement Dereco B, but only EL and D&H joined.
the Original Plan was that if either Road was Profitable for 5
Years they could be merged into N&W.
Jack Fishwicke made sure that didn't happen.
we can get into How N&W under Fishwicke was Bleeding any Funds
they could from EL and D&H.
D&H was never in the USRA, but was allowed to Expand to reach N&W
in several areas,and run to Potomac Yard, and Oak Island Yard in
Newark NJ, Hagerstown, Buffalo.
we'll get into the Proposals for MARC, and MARC+EL later.
but after running numbers those in Philly realized that USRA/CR
would never be Profitable if MARC/MARC-EL was allowed.
when EL joined USRA it looked like MARC+EL would Happen.
but Philly killed that Bold Idea.
as for the Profitable small roads, once the Parents were Bankrupt
they could have stayed out, Buffalo Creek was maybe the most profitable,
but Ironton likely had the least debt/overhead.
believe a Power Company also had a piece of Niagara Junction.
edit -- PC sort of cut LV loose,so it could have ended up with the C&O Roads.
edit-2,,,,C&O also had the Freight part of CSS&SB,sort of like how SIRT ended
up.
Spikre