As far as I understand it Conrail was under Federal Control in 1979. The Trains artical made it sound like they had to go to Wall Street for financing…Since Conrail was a quisi-federal agency/corperation and not s a stock company what options did they have?
It was under Federal financial control initially, but its mandate was to act as an independent profit-making corporation, without the requirement of going to the Government to approve each decision. It did raise money and sell stock outside of government financiing. And it did start earning a profit, and did end up returning part of the government’s investment to the government.
It turns out that well before the time Conrail was sold to CSX and Norfolk Southern, it had returned all of government investment and a several tens of percentage points more than what the “Wall Street” bankers invested in it. The federal government guaranteed all the outside investors against loss, so it was a win-win for the bankers. They had to after Penn Central soured the market so badly by egregiously abusing commercial paper.
I’m just remembering what I read in Rush Loving’s book and other sources. Correct me where I’m wrong.
Rush Loving’s book ---- what was the name of that again?
The Men Who Loved Trains.
Great read. I highly recommend it.[8D]
By the way, the Conrail electrification article is superb! If you haven’t read it, do so, and ponder the “might have beens.” Very well done.
The Conrail Story is very interesting and there are a number of ‘takes’ on it as to things that might have been from what was there, and how it was split up. The ins and outs of the political landscape and how they figured into where the final result would wind up, not to mention the interplay as the various railroad heads sought to carve it up to their advantages.
THe Conrail Electrification was built on what the Pennsylvania Railroad had laid down starting in 1910 with the tunnel into New York and through the 1920 up until it was broken up in 1968.
This PDF linked here might interest some of those scholarly types who might find the linked Paper of interest
“Pennsylvania Railroad Electrification Strategy”
By Michael Bezlla
Pennsylvania State University, University Park
Thank you, Sam, I’ve been looking for material like this for some time now. Paul D. North will be happy to read it, too.
We’re still looking for the Conrail electrification study that’s mentioned in Bob Johnston’s books and some others.
And thank You!
The following linked site is to a discussion that has taken place on a Railroad.net Forum and concerns the Electrification on the Penna RR, and its Middle Division. In it are comment that may possibly alude to the study you have mentioned.
http://railroad.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=96&t=150692
Hope this will be helpful to the discussion! [tup]
http://michaelfroio.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/pennsylvania-railroad-electrification/
On a slightly different note…
The GM10B had piqued my interest when I first saw a picture of the beast, especially with the 10,000hp rating. I’ve been curious what the speed tractive effort curve must have been like, guessing that it might be similar to the AEM-7, with the tractive effort tripled and speed halved.
- Erik
P.S. Did a search on “ASEA LJH108” (traction motors used in the AEM-7) and got several hits for the GM10B, so it was pretty much 1.5 AEM-7’s with a 2X lower gearing.