The Transportation Act of 1958 instituted the ICC procedure used to discontinue passenger trains into the Amtrak era: 1. Railroad(s) gave 30-day notice of proposed discontinuance 2. ICC, upon receiving protest letters, stopped discontinuance for four months to hold hearings 3. ICC would issue order either allowing discontinuance or continuing operation for one year.
Does anybody know how discontinuances were handled prior to 1958?
I do not know the details but the complaint was that train off cases took to long and the states would keep the intrastate service on even if no one road the train.
Prior to 1958 you were into the standard ICC process just like the still born RI merger.
Prior to 1958, each state had the authority over passenger train discontinuences. For example, in Illinois, I believe the Illinois Commerce Commission had the authority. In states like Wisconsin, permission to drop passenger trains was nearly impossible to obtain prior to 1958. Exceptions were the Milwaukee Road passenger trains between Madison and Milwaukee (including the “On Wisconsin”) which started to come off in 1956. However, the CNW had a great deal of difficulty dropping trains in WI until the afore-mentioned 1958 federal takeover. Even then, CNW had to include a compromise consisting of buying two sets of new bilevel equipment for the Peninsula and Flambeau “400s”. At any rate, soon after the 1958 ICC takeover, nearly half of the intercity pasenger trains in the U.S. were discontinued.