Was the Pacesetter Service a New York Central product? Does anyone know of any links to info about it? Tried to Google it and came up empty.
Thx much!
Stack
Try “Pacemaker” instead of “Pacesetter”.
Pacemaker was a NYC brand used for a Chicago - New York passenger train and also for their last attempt to stay directly in the less than carload freight business. They used the brand for both a passenger train and a high service freight operation.
Serving the area that it did, the NYC had: 1) an important traffic concentration of high value, service sensative, small sized merchandise. 2) realatively short rail hauls, i.e. Chicago-Cleveland.
The relatively high terminal handling costs of these shipments vis a vis their length of haul made them sitting ducks when truck service developed in the 1920’s. So the NYC responded with an intermodal container operation that cut the terminal expenses, improved rail equipment utilization, and allowed lower charges in order to compete with the truckers. This freight was very important to the NYC.
In 1931 the Federal economic regulators literally killed the NYC container inovation and began a “hampering” of intermodal operations that was to last 50 years. Stupid is the only word that can descibe this action. It hurt the NYC, the railroads in general, and the US economy.
The NYC really wanted to hang on to this traffic, and make money doing it. It was an important part of their business. “Pacemaker” was pretty much their last effort in the 50’s and 60’s. They linked 12, IIRC, service centers with boxcar service. At the centers the freight was transferred to/from trucks for highway delivery. Kind of like today’s “Logistic Parks”.
In any event, the dang Federal Government still controlled the rates and restricted th
Needless to say there is a ton of New York Central info on the internet
Here is a page of links
Here is another
http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/links.htm
And this board has a discussion about the cars and the train and a cite to the magazine of the NYC historical society
http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/archive/index.php/t-75584.html
Dave Nelson
Thanks much for the data guys. I appreciate it.