Sorry bout that, my phones spellcheck is a PITR!!!
I found this discussion that is a detailed description of the Esch-Cummins plan…
I believe someone mentioned “how did the Eastern roads react to this” well one answer could be that the eastern roads were merged in the same fashion into the “Northeastern Atlantic” and “Southeastern Atlantic” systems… just a bit of out loud thinking…
Getting any of the railroad brotherhoods or shippers to agree on a merger private or no would be a mircle of the first order.
You see in 1920 the Brotherhoods was still young and distrusted the railroad and the railroad had no great love for the brotherhoods.
Shippers seldom agree to any merger and are the first to scream “Foul!” if the merger stumbles in its transistion days.
Glad things went smoothly in your HO world.
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This is all starting to sound a lot like railroading in the UK to me.
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This is more on why the STRATTON & GILLETTE has no backstory. It is way to hard to interject believable fiction into the real world’s history. Unless you know a specific business decision that could have gone either way, there are very few points in history where one thing could be different, and not cause 10,000 other things to be different as well.
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Too much to write.
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-Kevin
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See that’s where factor X comes in or specifically Mr. X
Who is Mr. X well he’s a young railroad union bred self made millionaire that is the brains of the whole thing! Ripley merely got the idea from X! And because Mr. X is one of the “brothers” the unions felt they could trust him… far as the shippers go Mr. Xs business history won them over!
There problem solved…
Seriously though, that is a usable answer to the questions posed, right?
I came up with and alternative idea which is that I constrict the NWP-SWP as an early type of TTX except that instead of just cars locomotives are interchanged…
I think this is a much better idea. It also gets neatly around much of the antitrust, on the one hand, and resistance to full ‘iron ocean’ shared track and infrastructure on the other. Certainly a good way to ensure advantages of TOFC, and by extension CZ-style cruise trains with extended routes well greater than any direct set of destination pairs… this explains the ‘parallel’ operation of legacy-railroad trains while being able to get priority in dispatching and also skimming the ‘cream’ of premium service … advertise the **** out of it and be prepared to outsource ‘charters’ to other successful ‘passenger’ operators like established cruise-ship companies with extensive lists of dedicated patrons…
So instead NWP-SWP is an equipment pooling shipper, a co-op/alliance is made between the company and railroads to use track/equipment on their own lines aso well as the lines of other affliate, ally, co-op lines… the trouble is I want a valid excuse for one possibly seeing a MILW or GN unit running over Tehachapi or a SP or ATSF unit running over lookout pass or such is that possible with the indirect approach of just being a co-op company not owning any rail?
Could I alternatively split the history into two (or more) parts I.E. 1920 to 1940 it was merely a pooling company 1940 to 1960 an early super merger where the railroads retained their identities but are owned by and operate with NWP-SWP equipment then 1960 to 1980 full merger time… that timeline can shift easily to 1900 to 1920 and 1920 to 1940 and 1940 to 1960 or 1920 to 1940 and 1940 to 1960 and 1960 to 1980 I would be open to extending modeled equipment all the way to the late 70s Era just so I could run GP30s, SD40-2s, and of course UP super diesels… but really 1940 to 1960 would be the main modeled focus a few things being older and few newer…
I noticed Canada has no problem with mega systems because they only have the CN and CP I could just say Canada invaded us in WW1 [(-D]
Just kidding, but while I’m at it I “could” make Canada the new US frontier and it’s Provinces/Territories states!? Just sayin’ there are actually provisions in the US Constitution for Canada joining the Union just by saying yes! A leftover from the Revolutionary War Era… it’s really late so I better stop babbling…
Canada invaded us with respect to transcontinentals long ago; a true transcontinental (albeit north-south) was taken over just a couple of decades ago, and expansion in New England all the way to the Sound was only stopped when its proponent went down on the Titanic, and if there is an effective ‘grande ceinture’ around Chicago that isn’t an 18-track impossibility it will probably involve Canadian administration. (Meanwhile the CASO, one of the finest-engineered lines ever built, was systematically destroyed in recent years, but I digress…)
Then there is the reverse-merger thing, where a Canadian donut shop ‘takes over’ Burger King so that taxation can be avoided. Why not with a company like TTX, or REA, particularly in a historical epoch that wants to establish the ‘defense’ necessity of highways and deprecate the strategic importance of domestic ownership of key parts of our general system of transportation…
Nope…The rank and file would have their say and vote and later would more then likely vote Mr.X out of office because they would see him as a “yes man” to the railroad.
Another idea is how bout a half merger? The railroads retain 50% control/assets and the NWP-SWP has the other 50%, would that work?
Steven,
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You are running into a problem all creators of alternate histories have. If there was a good reason for it to happen, it probably would have happened.
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When I ditched the STRATTON & GILLETTE backstory, I became so much happier.
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-Kevin
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Trouble is I wouldn’t be satisfied with just my railroad exists because it just does! That’s just how I am…
I got a 32"x50" map of the US yesterday, I am going to transcribe the routes of the NWP-SWP system onto it…
I though I’d post an update, still working on the story, I mentioned the idea of maybe a half merger where the railroads retain half of their assets thereby retaining half control… what do you guys think?
I think you won’t have to go much further than the fate of Pennroad to see where that would have gone.
Remember that there are two halves to the ‘main plot’ of alternative history: what changes to let you do what you want, and what all the other guys do when it changes. All the antitrust, all the politics, everything going on with the van Sweringens and the post-Mellen Morgan … and meanwhile, all the things already changing when the government doesn’t prematurely staple railroad express containerization into an early grave.
I still think you might be better off seeing about resurrecting a fast intermodal express service, akin to an expanded version of the old fast-freight lines, which could contract for unit trains that would not be subject to common-carrier requirements and of course could own truck and air companies with little difficulty (perhaps even after 1935). Still a difficulty establishing any particular ‘railroad’ ownership, even at the relative arm’s-length of shared directors – this is why we have historians familiar with the '20s and '30s watching this.
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My latest history of the STRATTON & GILLETTE railroad:
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I was not there, then it was built, now it exists, and that’s the way it is, August 3rd, 1954.
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Why does your railroad’s history need to be more complicated than that?
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-Kevin
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I just wouldn’t be happy with my railroad just existing! That’s how my mind works…