After reading three different books about PRR and the failure of the PennCentral, I have to wonder if a greater part of the problem was the railroad itself. A lot can be said, of course, about over-regulation and the entire Northeast railroad problems. It seems the PRR, from about WW II, just kept doing a lot of things the way they always had, because: 1) they had always done things that way, 2) it had always worked before, and 3) they considered themselves “The standard rairoad of the world”. Did this mindset cause the Pennsylvania to eventually become extinct?
It wasn’t just PRR. The whole railroad industry after WW2 had the We’ve always done it this way and it’s always worked so far mindset.This attitude,along with government over regulation is what hurt the railroads in the post war era.By the time things started to change in 1980,it was almost too late.
another note…the PRR was realy just to big for its own good…as was the NYC in a geographical area losing its industrial base…the bread and butter…get bigger (the PC ) using the old managment mentality as mentioned was not the bestest of ideas…
At one time both had been as big as say, in 1945, but had also been profitable. It seems the world changed, and they didn’t.
I’m sure that the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the New York State Throughway, the New Jersey Turnpike, the Connecticut Turnpike, and the Massachusetts Turnpike didn’t help, either.
From what I’ve read, it seems that railroads did more than compete against each other. They actually tried to steal each other’s business, interfere with each other’s operations, and treated their employees badly.
Today we see airlines doing similar things, and they’ve lost billions of dollars per year, even after Uncle Sam paid them for 9/11 losses and impacts.
I think if the railroads had cooperated to get clients’ goods to destinations as quickly and cheaply as possible and had worked with their employees instead of against them, the trucks would not have been able to take away as much business as they did.
[:)]
I keep wondering how the railroad in Russia does these things. More track, more employees, bigger geographical area, maybe more traffic. Would a state owned system actually be easier to manage? And I don’t mean with dictatorial means, just management/business practices?
greetings,
Marc Immeker
That’s a good question…
The PRR certainly was a strange creature. I’ve heard it said that the “Std RR” motto really stopped applying after 19th century. In some ways, they seemed stubborn and inflexible, in others, modern and progressive. Here’s my short list of techincal issues:
Stubborn and inflexible:
No stokers on M1s and others as built
Did not embrace CTC
Bizzare “clean sheet of paper” steam design (T1, Q2, S1)
Modern and inovative:
Cab signal and speed control
All steel coaches
Electification projects
GG1 (learned from experience testing NH loco)
Congressionals
DOT partnership on Metroliners
An anicdote: A guy I knew from the NYC test lab summed up the difference between PRR and NYC culture by noting what the NYC and PRR test labs were working on at the time of the merger. The NYC lab had just done the jet powerd Budd car demo and was engaged in cutting edge research such as wear measuring using radioactive isotopes while the PRR was testing light bulb life. It was a case of one road thinking about “what can we do that’s new and useful” vs. “how can we save a penny doing what we’ve always done”.
The problem with this analysis is the Russian railroad is not profitable, and earns its survival off the government dole.
This may not be a problem to you, as some would say certain industry should operate in such a manner. But, that is not the type of economy the voters routinely endorse at the polls every November.
And, from my usual skeptical point of view, UPS and Fed Ex is doing laps around the US mail. As such, I can’t really endorse your theory that the government would run a better and more efficient system.
Gabe
I don’t take issue with your overall post, but I disagree with your analysis regarding airlines. The problem with airlines is much more complicated than that, and government intervention of a different kind–namely local–than that given to railroads is cited by several industry experts as what is destroying the industry.
I think someone like Greyhounds can give you a pretty thorough explanation of why the industry is falling apart.
Gabe
As someone who has travelled extensively on the Russkiye Zhelezhniya Doroga, I don’t think the infrastructure is something you would want to emulate in the west as well. I’ll be going back in a couple of months and travelling from Moscow to Saratov to see the inlaws. I’ll try to take some snaps if anyone is interested.
One of the big problems that PRR and everyone else in the northeast faced in the 1960s was that the industry that they were built to serve was gone. Yes some of it went to trucks, but a lot of it was either closed because the companies were out of business or because they had moved south or west. If you can get lucky enough to look at one of the employees timetables that lists all of the active sidings from sometime in the 1940s and compare that to the same list in the 1960s you will be amazed at how many shippers they lost.
My opinion is that the “mindset” or the management culture of the PRR effectively blocked any effort on the part of any individual or group on the railroad that might have tried to identify problems and offer solutions. That condition certainly doomed the PRR, but I don’t think it was the cause.
Try this question. Would have enlightened, forward thinking and “smart” management have been able to save the PRR? I think the answer may be found by looking at the New York Central. In spite of what Perlman and his managers were able to accomplish, the NYC was just hanging on.
In my view, the erosion of the traffic base was the leading cause of the demise of the PRR and the other Northeast railroads. Surely it could be argued that some marketing and operating options may have helped, but at what cost? For example, keeping the major market share of merchandise traffic would certainly have required dramatic improvements in door to door transit times. It wouldn’t have made any difference if this was accomplished using boxcars or piggy back trailers, the unit costs would have increased. At the same time, this new or improved service would still have to compete with the cost advantage produced by the inherent flexibility of the over the road truck service. I would argue that this would the remained the obstacle even if the then existing issues of crew size and regulatory constraints had been absent.
I don’t claim to be knowledgable about the airline industry. That said, even though Government intervention may well be a large part of the problem, surely airline (mis)management certainly deserves some of the credit. Even today, with load factors on most flights in the 90% range (from what frequent fliers tell me), airlines aren’t making money. Even I can figure out if you are losing money flying full planes you’re doing something very, very wrong. It’s impossible that Government interference can be the whole, or even the main, reason for the industry’s problems.
To get back on topic, the PRR in particular seemed to be saddled with too much unremunerative shorthaul traffic, too many terminals, too many employees. Even with Mr. Perlman NYC was treading water, but PRR didn’t have anyone of that caliber on board and they went further downhill faster.
The book No Way to Tun a Railroad had an interesting take on that. The author said that the PRR was run by operating men. Their focus was in getting traffic from point A to point B. They never even stopped to think about what it cost to move that traffic, or whether a carload actually made or lost money. In the past, that had always been the profitable way to run a railroad, so they saw no reason to change it.
A window on PRR mindset ala Juniata 1978:
Paraphase of speech given by low-level, up-through-the-ranks shop supervisor to mgt trainees:
“The best part of about working for the RR is that you always get paid on time. It doesn’t matter if the paycheck says PRR, PC or Conrail, the RR will always be here.”
I feel like there would/will always be a large railroad presence in the Northeast. It just took time for it to finally break (PC) before anyone would talk of fixing it.
I guess I don’t necessarily agree with your premise. If PRR tries a
clean paper design for steam locomotives, it is not being innovative
like NYC. I’d rather you suggested that not designing/building new
internal combustion locomotives made them less innovative than NYC.
Your
list of “innovative” accomplishments tends to involve their passenger
business along the East Coast. Most anyone who looks at the development
of the automobile in the 20th century would probably suggest that any
efforts on the passenger business was throwing money down a drain.
The
cost of the electrification of the East Coast corridor probably killed
what chance the PRR would have in the face of its big problems. I would
list them in this order:
-
The fossil fuel shift fron coal to
petroleum. I wish somebody would break out the coal shipments by
tonnage and revenues from say 1900 to 1965. -
Obviuosly the decline in the metal working industry that PRR was heavily dependent on.
An RR built for passenger movements that were decreasing throughout the
years from 1920, ignoring the effect of WWII, which skews the point.
Where
really innovative thinking was required, the managers coming up through
the ranks found themselves unable to see the forest for the trees
and/or unable to entertain the necessary lumbering demanded.
Gabe,
I know next to nothing about the Russian railroad system, not even if it is profitable or not. I only know that it is large and has some strange and fascinating history / locomotives etc.
I did not intend to suggest to nationalise the (American) railroad system, only that maybe a system like that in Russia had developed some better instruments to run a large railroad. Something got lost in translating my thoughts into written English.
As a taxpayer in my small and overcrowded country I like to see an affordable and profitable railroad system that responds to its customers needs. If it makes profits then there is more room for improvement. I do not care if it is totally privately owned, state owned or in between (as is the case in my country).
greetings,
Marc Immeker
I am certainly interested!
greetings,
Marc Immeker
Fair enough, as I failed to note your country of origin. My fault.
My only point was really to demonstrate that the Russian Railway system was a long way from profitability, which would not make it an ideal model to copy in the United States.
Gabe