September 1st, 2023 will always be remembered as the day Guilford died. I’ve had a several-year history with Pan Am/Guilford, and I share some of that here.
https://youtu.be/_mG3aZmh8U0?si=8PYLL2xIbeV0BhEo
I’ll be returning to the former Pan Am to see how Berkshire & Eastern is running things sometime soon.
Do we really want to remember Pan Am Railway?[:)]
I don’t.
Not after the way they fought tooth & nail to keep Amtrak’s Downeaster from operating, for one example. It’s now a success.
“Pan Am” brings to mind attractive stewardesses (“Hi, I’m Suzanne. Fly me to Mahwah” or some such place), not brakemen or conductors.
I believe Guilford is the New Haven suburb the founder hailed from.
I appreciate your sentiment, Harrison, and continue to enjoy your good videos.
One of the dumbest repurposing of a famous logo I have ever seen in my time on this Earth. Long ago I was working at the spinoff of Verizon Yellowpages and they hired a new CEO that was a self proclaimed market saavy guy. He came to work one day with a new logo “Building America one business at a time”. Now I don’t have to tell people here where he got that logo from and yes he had to cross the UP RR tracks on the way to work. He engaged in some shameless self promotion of how great that logo was as if he thought of it himself. So I would rate that as number two on the list behind Pan Am. Less than a year later the company was in bankruptcy as the spinoff was more a way for Verizon to transfer over and shed $8 Billion in debt than it was to be a serious going concern. Surprisingly, Verizon got away with that slight of hand and nobody called them out on it in the Federal Government. Massive abuse of the countries bankruptcy laws in my humble opinion.
The PanAm name belongs in the air, not on the ground.
I relate to Pan Am(erican) in the context of the Delmore Brothers “Pan American Boogie” of the old L&N. Never sounded right, in fact, nothing has sounded right insofar as RR names in the New England region since MEC, B&M, B&A, NYNH&H.
But I can understand some remorse for a fallen road as I actually regret Penn Central - for what it might have been after Staggers; but that was called Conrail.
As a long time Verizon (formerly GTE, formerly NOTCo) shareholder, I was wndering if the spin-off was a questionable way of getting rid of debt. My undertsanding is that the D&RGW did similar thing by assigning a lot of the debt to the RGS and then letting the RGS go bankrupt.
Figures can lie, Liars can figure.
Financial chicanery is a hallmark high finance.