Many generations and parts of my family have worked for the railroads. PRR,NYC,PC,CR,and NS now I my favorite road is the PRR. I was looking through family photos cause we have alot of family members with co-workers on the locos and stuff so I was looking for a PRR one. I came across one of my great grandfather (fireman) and his crew that were working the loco, they were lined up in front of the steamer and it was simmering in front of a roundhouse. Now here is a my question the tender said Pennsylvania Lines, is that the same as the PRR? Thanks Mike
I am not a PRR expert. I believe the Pennsylvania Railroad may have been divided into several sub-systems, with Pennsylvania Lines as part of it, or [erhaps Pennsylvania Lines referring to lines OWNED by PRR though possibly with some other identity as well. And I have heard of Pennsylvania “Lines West”. Maybe I will get the idea started and some PRR afficienado will come in to correct me…
The PRR was so big it had two ends to it. East and West hence Lines East and Lines West. Lines West were headquartered in FT. Wayne (I think) and had their own operating practices in regard to locomotive type and thing like headlight placement (centered on the boiler front) as well as some classes like the N1 and N2 2-10-2 classes that were primarily drag haulers running between the West Virginia and Kentucky connections and the Great Lakes hauling coal. They also placed Pennsylvania Lines on their tenders as the PRR was really a whole lot of smaller railroads that were bought out or leased. By about 1930 that was all consolidated into one standard for nearly everything including engine painting.
I agree with ndbprr. I am not an expert either but what is stated above is in agreement with what I have read.PRR also alloted groups of numbers to the various Lines West and this led to the mixed-up numbering of locos after “consolidating” Lines West .New locos were given any open number.
If you are modeling World War One or later, then Lines West is effectively the same as modeling the Pennsylvania Railroad, except for the scenery. There are a number of books on the history of railroading between 1850 and 1910 (or so) and I will refer you to them for longer discussions. For instance, my public library has The American Rail Network, 1860-1890.
The Pennsylvania Railroad, properly denoted, extended from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh. But the sheer volume of traffic on that route made it very profitable. Its management, drawn from the Philadelphia merchant community, could recognize opportunities when they saw it, and usually took them. It was not long before PRR was a (or the) financial backer for a number of railroads across the Midwest. Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, and St Louis were all targetted destination cities for these subordinate companies, because they were already large and/or busy and/or growing wildly and soon to be major markets.
I am most familiar with the Pittsburgh, Ft Wayne & Chicago Railway. This road, later a member of PRR Lines West, was finished just in time for the Civil War. It took PRR money to get the line done and refinanced because NW Indiana was mostly uninhabited swamp at the time. After the war, Jay Gould took an interest in the line as a connection to his Erie RR. PRR management swiftly altered the Board of Directors, corporate charter, and stock ownership to keep themselves in charge. This is sometimes called “The PRR’s smothering embrace” because the recipient road would stay subsidiary for permanent. PFtW&C’s corporate HQ (and major shops) was in Ft Wayne but after PRR was done, most of the officers lived in Pennsylvania and came to Indiana only on business trips.
Other lines had similar but not exact-copy histories. The Pittsburgh-Indianapolis line had financial problems for decades, requiring reorganizations
Thanks for all the help. Mike
I’m not a PRR expert, but for so many roads the late 1800’s seem to be a period of consolidation by buying out & leasing other lines. So the NC&StL came under control of the L&N. Money from the ACL/SAL bought control of the L&N, & so on. Many of the Southern roads operated on state charters. The state charters were somewhat effective in keeping some control over competition, keeping some roads from ever being built.
In this scenario, it may have been desirable to keep local management in place, but effective control is somewhere else. There are many examples of lending money to build a road, then leasing it for 100 years or more on completion. The system worked till the road went bankrupt & could not pay the bills.
For the model railroader and railfan perhaps the most lasting references to Pennsylvania Lines would be in references to a “Lines West Tender” which reflected the different practices of the two parts of that system. I assume at some point equipment from either end of the system migrated.
Here is a Lines West tender, found at this website http://www.answers.com/topic/prr-n1s
Dave Nelson