The PM was originally called the Flint and Pere Marquette, which denoted the two cities it connected. The town was named for the place where the missionary died. The town name was later changed to Ludington. The town was also the port out of which the PM operated their Lake Michigan car ferry fleet. There is still the ex-C&O car ferry Badger sailing across the lake to Wisconsin, although it only carries rubber tired vehicles now.
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Thanks for that post. I did not know that about the PM.
Rich
The Grand Rapids-Baldwin-Ludington-Manistee ex-PM/C&O line is now Marquette Rail, part of the G&W family.
https://www.gwrr.com/mqt/
G&W?
Now that is a new one in me.
Rich
When you look at the wheeling and dealing that the “Robber Barons” of the early 20th Century were capable of it is amazing that they got away with it for so long.
Rules were finally put in place but these rules seem to be fading away rather quickly these days.
The Van Sweringen brothers were way ahead of their time when it came to leveraged buyouts. They formed new companies on an almost daily basis. Take a look at the little known Alleghany Company and what financial holdings they were in charge of!
From Wikipedia:
In order to meet the Van Sweringens’ guidelines that the Rapid would not travel in street traffic, the brothers bought a 51% interest in the 523-mile (842-km) New York, Chicago and St. Louis Railroad (Nickel Plate Road) in 1915 from the New York Central Railroad. The route gave the Van Sweringens an unobstructed path to downtown Cleveland. From this acquisition, the Van Sweringens formed the Nickel Plate Securities Corporation, from which they would use investor money to buy a controlling interest in other major United States rail companies. At their zenith in 1928, the Van Sweringens controlled 30,000 miles (50,000 km) of rail worth $3 billion, nearly all of it purchased through credit. Lines under their control included the Erie Railroad, Pere Marquette Railway, Hocking Valley Railway, and Chesapeake and Ohio Railway. They managed to control this huge (for the time) system by a maze of holding companies (including the Alleghany Corporation) and interlocking directorships.
They bought the Nickel Plate (who remembers that the Nickel Plate was owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt and the New York Central?) for the sole purpose of gaining a few miles of right of way so they could bring their interurban line into downtown Cleveland.
There were several other holding companies as I recall, Look at the Guilford holdings in the eighties (Pan-Am Railway) and the Dereco Company with all the leftovers of the Anthracite roads including D&H and Erie-Lackawanna.
Talk about a tangled web!
Erie Lackawanna Marion dropping the diner by Edmund, on Flickr
D&H PA1 16 Montreal by Edmund, on Flickr
My first encounter with the Nickel Plate:
NKP 414 ET 1958 by Edmund, on Flickr
Hey, I even wore matching red pants!
Cheers, Ed
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G&W stands for Genesee and Wyoming. They’re a shortline holding company and own many shortlines in the US, you may recognize their corporate paint scheme:
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Thanks for that explanation, snowdog. I had Googled G&W and Genesee and Wyoming did pop up, but I thought, no way. Little did I know. Thanks again.
Rich
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Found this photo of Nickel Plate Road #765 & Pere Marquette #1225 at Hurricane, West Virginia, during side-by-side run-by for the 1991 NRHS Convention.
Rich
Source: - Photo by Joseph Petric, r/steamporn
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IIRC, the principals in Genesee and Wyoming were Princetonians, hence the orange and black on the various company liveries…
Thanks for the information, MidlandMike.
Like here in the U.K. railroads have small beginnings and grow, either taking over companies or being taken over.
David
It’s interesting how the G&W reference in Midland Mike’s post became A Genesee & Wyoming reference in David’s post. I wonder why the Discourse software picked that up in two different ways?
Rich
Edit Note: OK, I figured it out. When I copied Midland Mike’s reply, I did not include the link. When David copied Mike’s reply, he did include the link. Inclusion of the link displayed the full name of the G&W as Genesee & Wyoming. Interesting, for what it’s worth.
Rich
The Vanderbilts bought the new NKP in order to control a parallel,competing railroad, which they then starved for cash until they sold it. The NYC was ordered by the ICC to divest itself of the NKP in 1916, the same time the Van Sweringens were looking for about five miles of rapid transit right of way to downtown Cleveland from their real estate ventures in Shaker Heights. “Go big or go home” might as well have been their motto. When the 1929 stock market collapsed, so did their house of cards. My working-class grandfather, like many other Clevelanders, lost a lot of money when the banks that backed the Vans themselves crashed. Consequently, while their vision and achievements still serve Cleveland very well a century later, their reputation here was tarnished for decades.
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Quite a story. Thanks for posting, NKP_guy.
Rich
“Considering just how far the Nickel Plate actually got to New York, and how quickly the financial prospects went in the pot after 1882, the whole idea of nickel-plated anything verges on laughable – the Chicago-New York Air Line had better prospects.” W.H.
I think the syndicate (“Cheney group”) that built the NKP in 1881 did it almost as a bluff. I think the only reason the NKP was built at all was to force the Vanderbilts into buying it. The NKP didn’t have to build any farther into NY than Buffalo; they’d have other roads there to give them entree into the NYC area.
Vanderbilt must have known that the NKP crowd was up to financial blackmail and that it would be expensive to buy. He also must have known there was a shoestring budget behind the NKP. So it seems to me that he waited until the NKP opened before he made his offer. By the same token, the NKP syndicate must have realized they wouldn’t win a rate war against the Vanderbilts and had achieved their objective. They sold.
Vanderbilt bought the NKP and then let it more or less languish, while his own NYC became an enormously rich and mighty railroad. To and from Cleveland the NYC was four-tracked; the NKP outside the city limits has always been a single track.
In 1916 the NYC was ordered by the ICC to sell the NKP, since they saw it as a restraint of competition or trade, which it obviously was. At the same time, the Vans wanted to buy the NKP and together both roads committed to building and paying for Cleveland’s costly Terminal Group project. Next, the NYC built the Cincinnati Union Terminal. I’m sure that by 1933 the Vanderbilts and the NYC were sorry they had done both.
The impressive record of what the Van Sweringens did with the Nickel Plate is well known, and as evidence of their farsightedness, consider the Berkshires and John. J. Bernet.
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Always interesting to me reading about the ‘shenanigans’ of old railroad companies. Thanks for posting.
David
Yeah, especially when it is just a generation or two after the generation that included the so-called “robber barons”. The antics performed by such men as the Vanderbilts is totally intriguing to read about.
Rich
Here I am loving the very sound of the name Nickel Plate Road only to read about the real truth behind the railroad itself.
Rich
thank you NKP guy that was a great read , I love reading about the old railroads.
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I do too, especially the lesser-known ones.
Rich
now I’ll second that you hardly find anything on the lesser-know railroad.
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