O.K. I have to ask the question. I have heard the term fallen flags before and I’m not sure if it means what I think it means. Is it a term used for RR no longer in existance?[%-)]
That’s exactly right - I’m modeling the Reading and PRR - my way of picking up the flag.
Cool! Thanks for reply.
Yep! Just like jblackwelljr said.
Check out http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/ for all the fallen flag railroads.
[swg]
Yep, thats what it means. All former railroads even merged in railroads are fallen flags.(BN, Santa Fe.)
Think the term came about by combining the idea of an army’s lowering their flag in surrender, and the demise of the Wabash RR, which used a flag as it’s herald (“Follow the Flag”).
[:)]
Most fallen flags were completely or partially merged into an existing railroad or merged with another to form a new company. Occasionally, a railroad was completely abandoned, such as the New York, Ontario, and Western.
I wish somebody would document the family trees of all current and former railroads in this country showing the various mergers that went into forming each railroad. Maybe it has been done, but it would be really interesting to see a chart showing all the small early railroads that went into forming the giants we know today.
Does this site help? http://www.spikesys.com/Trains/fmly_tre.html
Pennsylvania merged with New York Central to form Penn Central which merged with apx. ten other railroads (like Reading, New Haven, etc.) to become Conrail which was merged into Norfolk Southern which came from the merger of the Norfolk & Western and the Southern which came from…
The only railroad in this example to not be a Fallen Flag is Norfolk Southern.
One of the railroads I model is the Missouri, Kansas and Texas (MKT) or KATY.
Had a quick look at this site and it appeared a bit incomplete in places - and as it states it hasn’t gone back into many of the C19th and early C20th predecessor companies, which are probably quite interesting. This info ceratinly exists (quite often in published works) if someone wanted to put the leg work in putting it all together as a tree.
To use an example I know something about - the Northeast - a major omission is that the D&H joined and then left the Guilford Transport group. A further example would be that the Lamoille Valley has changed its name several times not just the once indicated. You can’t fault the effort creating the resource - but use with a certain amount of caution.
Did you ever have a bookmark with virtually every railroad fallen flag in existence and forgot you had it bookmarked? If so, welcome to my world!
Southern Pacific/Denver and Rio Grande Western. I’m not going to tell you who swallowed them up, because I don’t like to think about it.
Tom [V]
Let me guess. Onion Specific ?..
Tracklayer
Hey Tom,
At least the company that swallowed Southern Pacific was fair about it, they used Southern Pacific’s last name, and their own first name.
UP all the way. Doug
Doug–good point, LOL!
At least I’m seeing more trains over Donner Pass, these days.
Tom
The original (way back when) Norfolk Southern was a fallen flag - IIRC, it was merged into the Southern while N&W was still running steam.
Chuck