And many clearly felt at least some of our selections were themselves blunders. I don't believe anyone came forward to claim the Penn Central was actually a good idea, or defended the demolition of Penn Station, but beyond that, there were letters, emails and even phone calls taking issue with almost every one of our selections. You Milwaukee Road fans were particularly vocal in defending the Pacific Extension.
We weren't able to publish as many of those letters in the magazine as we would have liked, since space for November's RPO column was constrained by all the other material in our 75th Anniversary issue. But we did want to acknowledge more of your comments. So here are three more letters we received from readers. And you are, of course, free to add your own comments about the biggest blunders below.
The value of passenger investment
The ninth blunder, “Passenger Over-Investment” was unsettling and greatly failed to correctly recall the history of the golden age of streamliners in the U.S. The investments made by the railroads in their passenger service after World War II gave birth to the world’s most advanced passenger rail system. In 1949, the top ten fastest trains in the world were all American streamliners. The ridership and profitability of these trains lasted until the late 1950s/mid 1960s.
Chris Barken and David Clarke were correct in stating that the airlines and autos brought great change to the American transportation system. However, they failed to account for the 15 percent tax rate imposed on passenger trains, the inability of the railroads to receive subsidies, as well as the total control the Interstate Commerce Commission held over passenger trains and their levels of service. This was all done while superhighways and new airports were being heavily subsidized by the federal government.
Passenger trains in the U.S. did not fail solely because of the introduction of new highways and airways. The streamliner system was also dismantled by unprecedented government regulation of the railroads. This was further amplified by the intense federal investments made in roads and airports.
The investment made by the private railroads in passenger rail after World War II was not a blunder. The true blunder was the systematic disinvestment the government made in the rail system of the U.S. through grotesque over-regulation of the railroads.
— Jack Wheeler, Littleton, Colo.
Some blunders were overlooked
I was disappointed in some of the blunders that were chosen. The obvious ones were covered well: Penn Central, New York Penn Station, rate regulation, and the Milwaukee Pacific Extension. I felt it went downhill from there.
The merger of Southern Pacific and Santa Fe was a win-win for the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway either way. The holding corporation ended up with the SP’s real estate holdings and dumped the poorer railroad, which was also the plan if the merger went through.
The Rock Island’s merger bid was more of a blunder of the Interstate Commerce Commission and less of the railroads. The positive outcome was the timeline for merger decisions and eventual elimination of the ICC.
Narrow gauge railroads did have a purpose in geographically challenged areas with rich resources that required some form of transportation.
Passenger over-investment became helpful when Amtrak couldn’t buy new cars. Most railroads were quick to embrace intermodal, they just didn’t have the technology to make it easy at first. And the hidden cost of joining Amtrak presents a confusing argument.
The blunders that were overlooked include: railroads that were built and became immediately redundant like the Kansas City, Mexico & Orient or the Chicago Great Western railways; specific technology that failed like Vert-a-Pacs or steam turbine locomotives; certain figures in the industry that did more harm than good like the Deramus family; and other historic events like the United States Railroad Administration’s takeover of railroads in World War I.
— Eric Miller, Highlands Ranch, Colo.
Standard gauge vs. broad gauge
The article asserts that the choice of 4-foot, 8½-inch gauge was a mistake on the grounds that a broader gauge would allow trains to haul more cargo. I do not see it as a blunder. While a broader gauge would allow cars of greater volume, the capacity of a railroad is determined by the strength of the rails and roadbed, not the distance between the rails. There is no reason to believe that the somewhat more expensive broad gauge railroad would necessarily be built more strongly than a well-constructed standard gauge railroad.
The original justification for broad gauge, when Isambard Kingdom Brunel built his 7-foot-plus Great Western Railway system in England, was stability at speed. No one will doubt that such broad tracks would be more stable. But experience in England and the U.S. showed that standard gauge rails could be stable enough. Furthermore, the experiences with different gauges in the U.S. in the 19th century showed that there was no significant difference in the carrying capacity.
The Erie Railroad was not the only broad gauge railroad constructed between 1835 and 1870. There were railroads with 58-, 60-, and 66-inch gauges, among others. They were all converted to standard gauge in the 1880s, but without notable complaints about loss of carrying capacity after this conversion.
I suspect that the notion that broader gauges would have greater carrying capacity comes from the debates over narrow gauge during the last quarter of the 19th century. Standard gauge trains were able to carry greater loads than the usual narrow gauge railroad of that time. But historian George W. Hilton, in his book, “American Narrow Gauge Railroads,” pointed out that the narrow gauge railroads were built as cheaply as possible. Their trackage was shoddy compared to the standard gauge trackage of the time. The whole idea of narrow gauge common carriers was that they would be cheap to build, cheap to run, and slow, which they were.
— James D. Wilson, St. Louis, Mo.
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