Y'all thought your correspondent might have overlooked a very important anniversary that happened today. No, it's not my birthday, but it is a birthday nonetheless.
01 FEBRUARY 1968 - The Penn Central Transportation Company is born from the merger of the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central System.
This was not a merger that created new efficiencies, improved service, cut costs, or took advantage of synergies between the two (and later three) railroads that comprised it. Rather, it was a last ditch effort undertaken by two ancient rival corporations whose economic fortunes had turned bad and were headed towards worse at Run 8 speeds.
The two main leaders of the new company, Stuart T. Saunders from the PRR and Alfred E. Perlman of the NYCS, didn't get along. The railroads didn't have a lot of good connections between their separate lines. But wait, there's more:
The bankrupt and hapless New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad successfully sued for inclusion into the merger, and became a part of the Penn Central system on 01 January 1969. Where there had been two ailing railroads floundering towards a hoped-and-prayed-for success, there were now three.
Deteriorated physical plants, hopeless administrative snarls, questionable diversifications, a weak economy, lethargic-if-not-lethal Federal regulations and even hostile weather combined to form a lethal cocktail that would send the giant railroad into bankruptcy on 21 June 1970, a mere 872 days after its creation.
This bankruptcy was the largest in American history at that point, with the Penn Central losing in the neighborhood of a million dollars (in 1970s value) per day for at least a year, with previous daily losses being in the neighborhood of $300,000 to $500,000.
It is a vast and complicated story to tell, and I don't understand all of it. For you, the reader, know that the death of the Penn Central gave us Amtrak, Conrail, railroad deregulation, and the vast array of commuter agencies that line the Northeast Corridor to this day. For a variety of reasons, the Penn Central Transportation Company is my favorite fallen flag---I stubbornly refuse to admit that the flag of the N&W has fallen---and I celebrate the anniversary of its birth.
Too bad I never got to ride the Twenty Cent Broad.
If you're interested in the Penn Central, I invite you to visit two of my favorite PC websites:
Penn Central Railroad Online
Penn Central Railroad Historical Society