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SteveC wrote:

Stuart Saunders and Al Pearlman, two leaders of Penn Central. Both should have gone to jail. Both were very anti preservation.

While there is a good case Stuart Saunders should have gone to jail, it was for the whole Penn Central mess, not for scrapping steam. I see no reason Al Pearlman should have been imprisoned.


I was not refering that they go to jail for scrapping of steam, but for fraud and their Penn Central exploits with things like EJA, (Executive Jet Avation i think) that was a playground for them and escorts and all of the excesses that has plagued Wall Street for decades. If you get a chance, read the book, "The Wreck of Penn Central". It makes you mad just reading it.

Yes, I do understand the need for a company to make money. Without profits, nothing else can happen. Look at all of the other roads that had stock holders and demands to perform just like NYC and N&W, and they still managed to celebrate their history as they moved forward.

I apologize that I misread you. The context made it seem (to me) like you thought Saunders and Pearlman should have gone to jail for not saving steam.

It has been a long time since I read The Wreck of the Penn Central and No Way to Run a Railroad, but I thought Pearlman escaped a lot of blame for the whole mess, while Saunders and the head of finance (whose name escapes me) were the real ones behind EJA, etc. The book The Men Who Loved Trains heaps the blame on Saunders and crew, not Pearlman. It seems many of the PC's financial problems went back to the PRR and its slowly hemorrhaging financial situation, makes for years by the N&W's profits.

Pearlman went on to run the WP, Saunders went home, never to run anything again. Kind of telling. Of course, the stockholders, bond holders, employees and customers of the PC paid a heavy price for the massive mismanagement.

Recently, when at the O. Winston Link museum in Roanoke, I noticed that a gallery of presidents of the N&W is named after Saunders. I just shook my head and walked away.

If UP or NS were suddenly un profitable, and the steam programs were still going, I'm sure you'd see a series of shareholder suits regarding things such as UP's 50 car excursion/business car fleet, etc. Preservation, for better or worse, seems to arise by sheer coincidence (1218 being used as a boiler), passion (611), or by accident.

I would have to defer to the more scholarly academics out there, but it was my experience with the book The Wreck of the Penn Central that it was a somewhat superficial, sensationalistic overview of the financial disaster, hurriedly rushed into print to capitalize on the bankruptcy. I would suggest that said book was written specifically to make you and other readers mad, much like a Michael Moore "documentary."

This is not to absolve Saunders, Perlman, et al. There was certainly enough blame to go around, and history has moved on since their debacles. But I would be wary of relying on The Wreck for an objective treatise on the multifaceted disaster of the era.

Good point Mr. Mitchell. I recall Rush Loving in The Men Who Loved Trains was very critical of The Wreck. While this topic has suffered from the oft-freared thread drift, I think the N&W's rise as a railroad industry power in the 1950s and 1960s, and its corresponding dieselization, scrapping of steam, is probably ripe for historical coverage. I for one would love to read internal memoranda and other items that would tell the story of the internal decisions that made a railroad such as the N&W move to diesel.

The leadership of Stuart Saunders and others at N&W, and Saunders, Pearlman, and others at PC/NYC/PRR is also probably ripe for a new, scholarly treatment.

H. Roger Grant at Clemson is one of the current leading academic railroad historians. He recently published a biography of Jervis Langdon. Maybe it's time for a better historical treatment of PC, N&W and Saunders from him or Fred Fraley, or Rush Loving, or someone....

First, it's "Perlman". One "a".

He put the D&RGW back together in the late 40s-early 50s for Wilson McCarthy (Trustee of the bankrupt D&RGW), and was castigated by Bob Richardson and other Colorado narrow-gage fans for abandonments/scrappings, etc.

The NYC of 1954 was a hollow shell, and needed severe rationalization and modernization--- A.L.P. did just that, making the NYC into one of the first truly modern railroads within 10 years. By contrast, the PRR simply continued to consume its "seed corn" and lumber on, unaware it was gravely sick.

Both Loving's book and "Merging Lines" are required reading for anyone who wants to learn about US railroading between 1940 and 2000. It is quite obvious that the "Red Team" led by Saunders and David Bevan (now, there's a REAL criminal) had no use for Perlman or his quaint notion of running a railroad to make money. They set him out in the clear as soon as possible, while they continued to play games with corporate finance and insider investment pools. Why, Perlman wanted to spend money to modernize the PRR!! That would eat up our dividend!! The Main Line social set would be appalled!!

Saunders was a lawyer and deal-maker, not a railroader. Steam power was OLD, and he was a modernist, a contemporary businessman of his times.

Previous posters hit the mark: a railroad is a BUSINESS, not a full-scale Lionel set for railfans to enjoy (at someone else's expense). Keep a roundhouse full of steam power?? What level of insanity would that have been?

Now, that being said, many Eastern railroads in the 50s and 60s could not repudiate their history, especially steam power, fast enough. NYC was not alone. It wouldn't have really hurt too much for a more organized effort to preserve a few more things. But aside from St. Louis and the B&O Museum, where could these things go?

Bottom line: be glad for what we have-- we could have been minus even that!

Howard P.

I have to state that I am far from an expert on either gentlemen, so I will have to defer to your position. Bevan was the other guy that I was thinking about that used creative accounting to hide huge losses while still paying dividends. By coincidence I was talking today to an old NYC employee who could speak nothing but high praise for Mr. Perlman also.

Howard, thanks for the reminder on Merging Lines I just ordered a copy, as it's been on my "to read" list for quite some time.

As a side note, on this forum, there was a post centering on the in-house film made by the Penn Central when they werre seeking a government bailout. The film showed some modern facilities, such as car repair facilities, and some not-so-modern facilities. I seem to remember the "modern" facilities were all on the old NYC.

Loving points out in his book that even by the mid-1950s, the PRR was beginning to collapse under its own weight, which is amazing to think, considering the size and scope of the company.

In 1957, every one of the 10 largest transporation companies in the United States were railroads. I wonder how many railroads are in the top 10 today.

I apologize for the double post. While I've been interested in railroading for most of my life, what made railroading really interesting was when I began to read books like what we've discussed. It's one thing to enjoy watching or working on steam locomotives. It's another to do that, and understand the how and the why. It gave me a lot of respect for the massive financial undertaking that railroading was and still is.

For those of you "playing at home" and who aren't bored to tears, here are the books we've discussed, in no particular order:

Saunders, Richard Jr., Merging Lines: American Railroads, 1900-1970 (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2001).

Saunders, Richrd Jr., Main Lines: Rebirth of the North American Railroads, 1970-2002 (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2003).

Loving, Rush, The Men Who Loved Trains: The Story of Men Who Battled Greed to Save an Ailing Industry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008

Daughen, Joseph and Peter Binzen, The Wreck of the Penn Central (Beard Books, 1999).

Salsbury, Stephen, No Way to Run a .: Untold Story of the Penn Central Crisis (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981)

Grant, H. Roger, Visionary Railroader: Jervis Langdon Jr. and the Transportation Revolution (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008).

All of these books are available, new and used from Amazon, and the other usual suspects.

David M. Wilkins
Never-Ending Bibliography, Missouri

I should point out that, although a republication of The Wreck of the Penn Central does indeed date to 1999, the original publication date was 1971.

In fact, you can glance at a preview copy of the first 45 or so pages posted online at Google Books and decide for yourself whether or not it's more factual or sensationalistic:

http://books.google.com/books?id=5ur402 ... &q&f=false

I love steam and am amazed at the levels of efficiency that N&W brought it to.

That said, it's difficult to dispute the cost savings that even 1st gen diesels create, especially when it comes to labor (mostly in the shop but also operationally) and they are so compelling that the sooner you dieselize the better off you are even if it means junking new steam power. And the sooner steam is entirely gone you can get rid of lots of facilities and manpower.

Ever see that video of Steve Lee talking about employment in the shops in Cheyenne during the steam era? The drop in labor costs with diesels was tremendous.

Sad but true. I don't think N&W dieselized just because steam "looked" bad. The numbers support dieselizing.

Steve