Speech to Railroad Executives and Government Officials

[Miningman]

Lets say you could deliver a speech to Railroad Executives, high ranking Government transportation officials, folks who know railroading inside out and can get things done. You are who you are today with what you know except .. It's 1948. You cannot talk about the future events of the political/natural world or anything like that...you can only address this powerful group about railroading issues. How would you steer them? What would you really like to get across? I'm giving you high ranking status and credentials. Your words carry weight with these folks. You have the floor for 20 minutes or so. (Besides screaming out "for Gods sake save a T1 and a J3a Hudson")

[Miningman]

Well to (try) to start the topic : I would begin by reminding everyone of the incredible and immense role the railroads played in winning the war which just ended 3 years ago. That it was a remarkable achievement of cooperation, in a free enterprise system, between competitors in the industry and the national interest of government. That a task unequalled since Hercules had been accomplished and that it was time to recognize it as such and some rewards were due as thanks. 

Without alluding to any kind of future that occurred I would then go into a need for end to end mergers, to make the railroads "longer" and combine several forces in many east -west and north-south routes all with long hauls. I would remind everyone of the rather obvious future to come, and that as things stand, the railroads will be left behind and forgotten about and this must not occur at all costs. Legislation is needed to really loosen up the rules on severe regulations. 

I would then point out the need for commuter services in the cities is a necessity and social responsibility, beyond the capital, cost requirements and revenue shortfalls that railroads could endure. 

Then go into something about real fair play for the future in all forms of transportation. 

If there was time, and as a wish list, I would in no uncertain terms remind all present that 100 years or more of railroading, and a entire continent, was built under steam locomotive power and that it is obvious to everyone that this was coming to a close. I would urge the railroads (and maybe the government) to once again cooperate together in providing a total class 1 overhaul , while they still could, of their finest examples of steam locomotives, perhaps one of each wheel arrangement, and then to be kept somewhere, perhaps one location in each the West, Central, East and South in an under utilized or soon to be not used roundhouse that is itself in good condition. I'm certain there were many good candidates at the time. That this endeavour was also in the National interest and vital to future historians and the public in general. 

Would I get the proverbial "pie in the face"? Laughed out of the room? Maybe. At least it get's the seeds planted. When good folks wake up anew the next morning they had time to realize about how true the words were. That's when good folk do the right thing. 

I know it's all a bunch of hooey and wishful thinking now, but that's what I would say. Any thoughts? 

 

[NorthWest]

Miningman

I would begin by reminding everyone of the incredible and immense role the railroads played in winning the war which just ended 3 years ago. That it was a remarkable achievement of cooperation, in a free enterprise system, between competitors in the industry and the national interest of government. That a task unequalled since Hercules had been accomplished and that it was time to recognize it as such and some rewards were due as thanks.

And if someone was considering a new national superhighway system in the coming decades with national defense being a key stated reason, then it might be nice to help out the defense-critical railroads and not tax them at high levels to pay for road construction.

[Miningman]

NorthWest- Terrific! That's going in the speech. 

[Overmod]

I take it you've read Hungerford's A Railroad for Tomorrow, which is one very-well-informed railroad man's prescription (in 1945) of what the world of 1961 would be like.  That will give you a different idea of what people in that era -- which developed almost immediately afterward in so different a way -- were expecting.

Most of the points in the "speech" can be recognized clearly in editorials and articles in the contemporary 'railroad press' - interspersed with complaints about the massive rise in both cost and expectations of the cheap labor upon which so much of steam's economics rested.  I would think it better to talk about the items under direct control of people in the railroad industry ... get them to embrace, for example, putting 'patent' rights to steam components and auxiliary devices under common, perhaps AAR, ownership rather than letting them disappear piecemeal; developing and then using more definitive metrics for dieselization (and in a wider context encouraging the right kinds of financing, instead of financier-driven reliance on equipment trusts and so forth, for strategic equipment); the development of effective forms of just-in-time scheduling rather than commodity transport.  (I, personally, would advocate both ways 'around' Government bans on ownership of other transportation modes by railroads, specifically those involving truck-line ownership, probably embracing a 'loophole' in which the trucks were specifically designed to optimize what we now call 'intermodal' operation with recognition of lane logistics.)

I'm not sure what could be done to maintain passenger service (except perhaps finding ways to spend the vast sums used on postwar streamliners that nobody wanted to ride a decade later either on more effective service, or development of alternatives that weren't cheaper, bumpier, noisier and breakdown-prone.  Again personally, I'd like to have seen advanced versions of Cripe's Train X that were better isolated in secondary suspension and noise isolation, perhaps with power-assisted pendulum tilt and with guidance optimized to staggered-joint American track, with better interiors and amenities. 

Mergers were a common subject well before 1948, and their suppression for political reasons well-understood (and well-decried) before the 'four system' proposals around the era of the Esch Act, or the end-run of the van Sweringen system formation.  The system of ownership and operation would have been thoroughly rationalized, and redundant capacity reduced, as early as 1925 had the urge to get cheap tax revenue from a politically-disfavored source not been so profound at so many levels.  I don't see anything short of the kind of catastrophe the railroads actually experienced up to the early Seventies  being able to bring about meaningful deregulation or taxation reform -- and I would most emphatically NOT talk in 1948 about cutting back double-track or bidirectional routing just to save on the tax or track-maintenance bills.  Perhaps some better 'community-organizing' skills on the part of the railroad community in general, to bring about political and social change that would favor effective deregulation, might have been far better than all the carping and attempts at manipulation or brinksmanship that actually did typify railroads in the age where Asimov compared them in future relevance to ziggurats.

[wanswheel]

Overmod

Hungerford's A Railroad for Tomorrow

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.b3220019;view=1up;seq=7

 

The Saturday Review, April 20, 1946

The Railroad That Is To Be

 

RAILROAD FOR TOMORROW. 1960.

By Edward Hungerford. Milwaukee:

Kalmbach Publishing Co. 1946. 323 pp. $5.

 

Reviewed by ALLAN NEVINS

 

To anybody interested in railroads and railroading this is an informative book. It is also a provoking book, because it is really three volumes in one, and they are so commingled that they leave the reader at times breathlessly confused. First, it is an account (as seen through the eyes of a roving British journalist) of the railroads of the United States in 1960, after they had been integrated into one huge national system by an industrial genius named William Wiggins. Second, it is a description, expert and often fascinating, of the specific improvements that can well be installed on our railroads in the next ten years—improvements in engines, in passenger coaches, in dining cars, in terminals, in the correlation of airplanes and trucks with railways, and in the remapping of different systems.

 

Finally, and most interestingly, are the scattered and fragmentary reminiscences by Mr. Hungerford who has known our railroads and rail magnates intimately for decades—reminiscences of men like Daniel Willard, Loree, Samuel Rea, and the Van Sweringens; of the battles and treaties of the bigger lines; of the building of the big stations in New York, Cleveland, Chicago, and other cities; of railroad control under McAdoo; of times of boom and days of bankruptcy. All this makes a potpourri which the reader has to sort out for himself, but which is worth the sorting.

 

In his picture of the great unified system that he thinks the country ought to have in 1960, the United States Railroad, with tracks straightened, useless competition eliminated, and services coordinated, Mr. Hungerford has given us a blueprint which will make many railroadmen uncomfortable in a double sense. It indicates how much waste and inconvenience attach to the present situation, with a congeries of big and little lines imperfectly systematized by the I.C.C. It also suggests that before many decades pass an iron hand may be needed to bring order and economy out of the semi-chaos; and there can be little doubt as to the identity of that hand.

 

The author creates an indomitable tycoon, Wiggins, who first unifies the railroads of New England (he began as a Maine boy), and then with advice from Herbert Hoover goes on to integrate those of the United States, paying for securities in new four percent stock-and-bond issues guaranteed by the United States Treasury. It becomes possible to run thirteen-hour trains from New York to Chicago, and fifty-four-hour trains from Washington to San Francisco. Passengers revel in unprecedented speed, comfort, and convenience; super-freight-trains handle enormous quantities of merchandise; efficiency (with feather-bedding abolished) gives employes higher pay, engineers making up to $500 a month. All this may be possible. But where shall we get our Wiggins? If the dream is ever realized, his name will probably be United States Government. Even if there is a Wiggins who creates the one great system, when he dies the government will probably fall heir to his empire. Bright as the picture is, it will raise worries in the mind of our railroad presidents and indeed ofall opponents of government ownership.

 

When Mr. Hungerford turns to improvements that are immediately practicable, he has much to say that will make a tired traveller's eyes light up. Those who have bumped about the country in antique day-coaches, and have tried to get a shipment through in less than Methuselah time, will be delighted if even half his fancies come true. These astrodome stream-lined coaches, passengers sitting in glass and steel bubbles to view the scenery; these new sleeping-cars all individual rooms, and dining-cars with tables set in triangles; these new non-change transcontinentals; these shiny stations, with "helioports" atop; these gas-turbine locomotives, whisking steel-and-plywood boxcars through the countryside at lightning gait; these new two-to-five ton containers for package freight, which can be lifted instantly from or to a truck-chassis—they are all described as perfectly easy to install.

 

A great many photographs, sketches, and diagrams bulwark Mr. Hungerford's persuasive text. He explains, too, how railroad improvements will help to decentralize industry, reduce manufacturing costs, and make city and country alike more pleasantly livable. May his progressive ideas find lodgment in railroad offices! May many of them be put into effect before the present generation grows old and gray!

 

But the best part of Mr. Hungerford's book lies in the scattered reminiscent passages. They are so good that we may hope he will yet do a full-length autobiography. He began his career, as he says, as officer in the old Wells-Fargo express office. During his long activity he has known the whole generation of railroad leaders who followed Jim Hill, E. H. Harriman, Collis P. Huntington (of whom he speaks more respectfully than most Californians do), and Henry Villard. Some of them, such as the redoubtable Daniel Willard (Mr. Hungerford is the historian of the Baltimore & Ohio), and the scholarly L. F. Loree, he could call intimate friends, who gave him their confidence. He has followed railroad history through many ups and downs—through the tight controls of the First World War, through the speculative twenties, and through the grim depression years that brought so many to or near bankruptcy.

 

The author probably knows more about the overall picture of railroad operation today than any man alive; he can explain why half of the Boston & Albany is strong and half is weak, and why the Alameda Street Station of the Southern Pacific and Union Pacific in Los Angeles is a poor station despite its easy accessibility. Besides, he can fling into a two-page footnote a thumbnail sketch of the Van Sweringens of Cleveland and their operations which is a real addition to history. These brief reminiscences are of course a little out of place in a book about the United States Railroad of 1960; they are just tossed in as background. But they are illuminating. Nor are the glimpses of British and French railroad practice which the author gives us less valuable.

 

Altogether, this is an interesting if ill-arranged and none too well digested book. The reader will have to sort out the three parts, but each of them is worth reading. No doubt by 1960 much of the book will excite a smile, but some of it may be regarded as authentic prophecy.

[Miningman]

Geez, and I liked Asimov. Certainly telling of the mindset of the folks at the time. For those not knowing what a ziggurat is ,,,it is an ancient pyramid with, I believe, ramps winding around the structure ascending to the top. Goes all the back to the Sumerians. However, it is a rather insulting and dismissive comment, certainly thankless, put down of the relevance of railroads and "fightin' words", for me anyway. Personally I am an older prof now and although I know some coworkers regard me as a "pylon" now, my students know better and are very heartening. 

Thanks for the input. Was hoping there was some way to avoid the coming catastrophe. Surely there were signs of it already, albiet in their infancy, but some learned railroaders and up and coming young bucks should have been able to understand the intent and importance of what you are able to say. Guess not enough to turn the tide? Suppose so. Sigh. 

The Classic Trains "Photo of the day", just yesterday, shows the Rock Island Golden State at Joliet. Stunningly beautiful, well looked after, all gleaming and glistening. I doubt if any could see its rapid downfall, so thorough and destructively complete and not long after the photo. To what end? 

I really like your idea of placing patent rights for steam appliances under AAR control. Believe this was doable and necessary. 

Any chance for a siren call at preservation? Wake 'em up a bit?

 

[Miningman]

Point being, was there anything that could be spoken to these groups of people in power and influence that could have convinced some to enact deregulation at this time? I think some knew it was inevitable and that big problems were very foreseeable. There are always people ahead of their time that have both changed outcomes dramatically or failed miserably. It would be interesting to a) give it a try at least  b) if successful then see the outcome c) I think you could have garnered at the least more support from politicians and the public for preservation.