Another pioneer ahead of his times…
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3943/is_200104/ai_n8938695
The original C&O…
A company plane doesn’t in itself show that Robert R. Young was thinking outside the box, there’s a lot of other evidence to show that he did, though.
Several airlines started out as railroad subsidiaries: The original Wisconsin Central RR established Wisconsin Central Airlines, later North Central, then became Republic, now part of Northwest; Boston & Maine established Boston-Maine Airways, later Northeast, now part of Delta; Canadian Pacific had Canadian Pacific Airlines, merged into Pacific Western as Canadian Airlines International; etc.
The C&O team dutifully boards their corporate conveyance…in days of yore…
Post World War II - Robert R. Young
By the end of the World War II, C&O was poised to help America during its great growth during the decades following, and at mid-century was truly a line of national importance. It became more so, at least in the public eye through Robert Ralph Young, its mercurial Chairman, and his Alleghany Corporation.
Young got control of the C&O through the remnants of the Van Sweringen companies, in 1942, and for the next decade he became “the gadfly of the rails,” as he challenged old methods of financing and operating railroads, and inaugurated many forward looking advances in technology that have ramifications to the present. He changed the C&O’s herald (logo) to “C&O for Progress” to embody his ideas that C&O would lead the industry to a new day. He installed a well-staff research and development department that came up with ideas for passenger service that are thought to be futuristic even now, and for freight service that would challenge the growth of trucking. Young eventually gave up his C&O position to become Chairman of the New York Central before his suicide in 1958.
During the Young era and following, C&O was headed by Walter J. Tuohy, under whose control the “For Progress” theme continued, though in a more