I seem to recall reading in several places that the Erie led a difficult existence thanks to the work of robber barons. I’ve never read exactly how the robber barons managed to cause problems for the Erie, though.
Who were the figures involved? (Jim Fisk comes to mind, but I can’t think of the other names off hand.) And how did they go about their “business?”
Daniel Drew was another major player as was Jay Gould. Drew competed with Vanderbilt in shipping and lost, then with railroads (Erie) and lost. They gained noteriety for manipulating stock prices and swindling investors. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out they’re laws or SEC rulings named after them. Maybe there are, I don’t follow stocks enough to know for sure.
Edit: here is a quick read that says it better than me:
The Erie was a peculiarly attractive vehicle for the stock manipulator and speculator. It was big enough to generate serious profits on stock appreciation but not an intrinsically valuable property like the PRR or NYC, thus could not attract an investor like Vanderbilt or Scott who would build it into an impregnable generator of cash flow.
Daniel Drew composed this brilliant, rueful couplet after one of his schemes went awry:
“He who takes what isn’t hisn’ must give it back or go to prison.”
RWM
“They proceeded to drain the line, divert funds into their own pockets and allow the railroad to deteriorate”<<
Sounds like a contemporary railroad we all know and love. [:D]
Very, very interesting. There was another thread about the Erie awhile ago and it’s shaky survival and eventual collapse into Conrail. Had the Erie not been crippled by the work of the Robber Barons in the mid 19th century, would it have been a bigger player into the 20th century?
Only at the expense of the NYC.
Here’s a possible alternative history. Suppose it had been “Vanderbilt of the Erie” and “Drew of the New York Central” instead of the other way round. Under this history the Erie would have steadily built up its territory, traffic, and fixed plant, while the NYC’s management spent their time and energy devising clever ways to mulque money out of unwary investors, and let the railway run itself. As the 20th century dawned, the Erie would be a powerhouse, with extensions to St. Louis, deep into the coal fields, the rate-setter and service standard between New York and Chicago, despite its not-quite-so-good alignment and the fact that it didn’t directly serve most of the population centers in Ohio.
In the 20th century the NYC would have been managed properly despite its tawdry past, and steadily recover from the lost investment. Its physical and traffic advantages would come forward, and gradually gain strength at the expense of the Erie. A progressive Erie management would have sought merger with NYC while it still had power, but the ICC would not have been able to wrap its head around its self-inflicted paradox of “more competition, more service” and the merger would have come to nothing. Finally in the 1960s the Erie, NYC, and PRR all would have been thrown into one PennErieCentral, which would have rapidly gone bankrupt, and Conrail appeared, and the same track route miles thrown overboard that Conrail pitched out.
Fundamentally railroad competition is a zero-sum game. More competition doesn’t create more traffic but in fact beggars the railroads, leading to loss of ability to handle the traffic, leading to shippers relocating or revising their production in order to stay in business, in a downward spiral. The Official Territory was only going to create X amount of traffic at any given time regardless of whose boxcar arrived at the spur to haul it away. Had the
All this talk of the Erie Railroad and Robber Barons calls to mind the current CSX vs. TCI debacle going on right now.
Isn’t this basically what some commision back in the 20’s was trying to do-consolidate the eastern rairoads into entities that could survive?
[quote user=“Railway Man”]
Only at the expense of the NYC.
Here’s a possible alternative history. Suppose it had been “Vanderbilt of the Erie” and “Drew of the New York Central” instead of the other way round. Under this history the Erie would have steadily built up its territory, traffic, and fixed plant, while the NYC’s management spent their time and energy devising clever ways to mulque money out of unwary investors, and let the railway run itself. As the 20th century dawned, the Erie would be a powerhouse, with extensions to St. Louis, deep into the coal fields, the rate-setter and service standard between New York and Chicago, despite its not-quite-so-good alignment and the fact that it didn’t directly serve most of the population centers in Ohio.
In the 20th century the NYC would have been managed properly despite its tawdry past, and steadily recover from the lost investment. Its physical and traffic advantages would come forward, and gradually gain strength at the expense of the Erie. A progressive Erie management would have sought merger with NYC while it still had power, but the ICC would not have been able to wrap its head around its self-inflicted paradox of “more competition, more service” and the merger would have come to nothing. Finally in the 1960s the Erie, NYC, and PRR all would have been thrown into one PennErieCentral, which would have rapidly gone bankrupt, and Conrail appeared, and the same track route miles thrown overboard that Conrail pitched out.
Fundamentally railroad competition is a zero-sum game. More competition doesn’t create more traffic but in fact beggars the railroads, leading to loss of ability to handle the traffic, leading to shippers relocating or revising their production in order to stay in business, in a downward spiral. The Official Territory was only going to create X amount of traffic at any given time regardless of whose boxcar arrived at the spur to h
And I’d be willing to pay in advance for my copy.[8D]
With due respect to Railway Man who from his posts is obviously quite knowledgable, it is easy to come up with endless “what if” scenarios. Although finance is an important part of the story of the Erie, many of the engineering and operational decisions that shaped the Erie are equally important.
Perhaps one of the worst choices was the non-standard track gauge of six feet instead of the industry standard 4’ 81/2". This made interchange with other railroads difficult and connections next to impossible except with a few short lines connecting exclusively with the Erie. For example, the Lehigh Valley had an impressive trestle at Waverly, NY where the LV’s standard gauge coal (anthracite) hoppers were dumped into the Erie’s broad gauge hoppers below for shipment to Buffalo, NY and other points. Ultimately, this method became so onerous that the LV financed the laying of a third rail on the Erie west to Buffalo to permit operation of standard gauge equipment over the line. Still, even this agreement required that trains be composed of equipment of one size or the other and the LV eventually abandoned this method when it built its’ own line west to Buffalo.
The engineering around the six foot gauge led to a wider and more expensive right of way that seldom accomodated more than a single track. On some major viaducts gauntlet tracks were used increasing the likelihood of accidents. Moodna viaduct is such an example. Even the famous Starrucca viaduct was built for a single track. The added expense of all this engineering on a larger scale far outweighed any additional carrying capacity of th
You bring up the excellent point that the Erie, like many railroads unclear on the concept of location engineering had not only overbuilt its alignment but worse spent it on enhancing width when it should have concerned itself with length and where it was going. Who the heck needed to go to Dunkirk, anyway!
As A.M. Wellington observed, railway location “is the art of doing that well with one dollar which any bungler can do with two after a fashion.”
The initial gauge error mattered in the grand scheme little after it was re-gauged and bankruptcy wiped out the construction debt. The deeper problem was that the Erie’s costs of operation compared to its revenues were too high compared to the competition due to its excessive length for the long-haul traffic and its less favorable location for the local traffic. For the years 1881-1885, its percentage of operating expense to revenue was 69.7, compared to NYC’s 67.9, PRR’s 58.3, and B&O’s 56.0. The problem is that the through rate has to be identical for each road. Wellington ascribed the difference for this period as follows: “Thus the PRR, having the shortest haul (and consequently the highest receipts per mile) on traffic between almost all points in the West and the Atlantic coast, will forever maintain, under equal skill in management, a ratio of receipts to expenses from 10 to 15 percent higher than the Erie. The NYC would compare still more unfavorably in this respect except that the enormous volume of its local traffic favorably modifies its average, which will on this account, under existing conditions, always be more favorable than the Erie. The low ratio of the B&O, as respects the PRR, is due almost exclusively to the greater volume of its coal traffic, which is always carried in full trains at low cost.”
Paraphrasing Wellington further in his comparison of the trunk lines:
The Erie suffered three injuries:
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I seem to remember reading that the PC was left to rot while the board made millions in salaries and bonuses… What actually caused its demise?
The Rock Island AND the Erie colapsed at about the same time…
Was this loss of a independent western carrier the cause of the loss of the Ill-In-OH portion of the Erie Mainline?
i started a thread over in Classic Trains on this topic…got no responses…after 20 years of building upon completion in 1858 the Erie was the longest single railroad in the world…over 500 miles of broad gauge…it was posed to become one of the largest buisnesses in the US the Erie never used strap iron rails it started with rolled iron rails from England was built to broad gauge 6’… even after the NYC was consolidated the Erie was still in a better postion to stay on top… the lathargic building caused by this credit crunch or that stupid idea by certian company presidents couldnt stop “the Work of the Age” as wrote by newpapers of the time…the Erie payed dividends early in its time…payed well too…then Dan’l Drew, Jay Gould and James Fisk got their hands on it…sold millions of worthless stock to Vanderbilt…bribed Congressmen…generally ran the Erie finiances to their benifit…and made millions…and so wrecked the company that even 100 years later it was struggling to be #3 trunk line in the East…my pondering is this…If the Erie hadnt been beset by robber barrons would it have grown in to the major eastern system that the NYC or Pennsy became later on?..from a Buisness point the early Erie got robbed of the bright future it was working on…as far as Wellington and locating the line…when the Erie was chartered in 1833 there wasnt really a science of right of way construction…looking at any rail map of many eastern states shows this…lines built prior to 1865 seem to meander all over…after 1865 straight lines took over…good example of this is seen in southeast MI…the MC the LS&MS the PM all wander out of Detroit and across MI…then you see the Wabash and DT&I and newer lines of the previous mentioned and they are straight point A to point B…back to the Erie the early Erie had many RR firsts…first news butchers on trains…first conductor ticket punch…first telegraph train orders… fi
The Erie and the Rock both served a major city and managed to miss most of the rest or serve them the long way there.
The Erie’s route west of New York, while a engineering wonder, was up and down, while the NYC was level and the PRR only had one major hill that they through a lot of power at to move trains. The Erie was at a disadvantage. It made it hard for them to compete with time sensitive frieght.
IIRC, the Erie had very little on line traffic which sis not help.
George W Hilton once opined that one of the leading wonders of the Erie was negative: It managed to get from New York to Chicago and miss almost every major city in between. Youngstown was the one solid hit. Note that both Buffalo and Cleveland were located on the ends of branches from the main line. On the other hand, he also opined that this helped Erie’s passenger volume hold up a lot better. Most of the small cities on the main line did not get alternate transportation options until quite late.