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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by talbanese My question is: Did the failure of the eastern roads play any part in Rocks failure? [/quote] Not really any more than with anyone else. The RI was not in particularly good shape except maybe for a few years right after WWII, and even that's debatable. One of the biggest factors contributing to its demise was the SP's taking and running off with it's longest haul freight traffic by using the SSW and the Flatonia connection to run around it by connecting to the east at the Memphis and East St. Louis gateways. It didn't matter that the run was over 400 miles longer. By diverting the vast majority of the connecting transcontinental freight off the Golden State route they could get all the cookies. Word on the street was that SP would do anything to get the RI line all the way into CHI, including bankrupt them by starving them to death. Eventually, of course, they did just that. Keep in mind that on all the other RI lines that were actually set up for volume freight, they actually got short-hauled. The SP craved that line as much, if not more, than the UP craved the Council Bluffs line, but the SP could make a much bigger dent in RI's bottom line to get what they wanted. Like a lot of the other grainger roads that extended into the Southwest, a protracted drought in the late '40's and early '50's hurt by significantly reducing grain loadings, as did the big drop in traffic at the end of the Korean War. It's not surprising that they, like several others, started to go on the skids in about 1953. The sad part is that they had such a great connection at Blue Island. It also didn't help that the RI never really got anywhere the direct way, or that they had been bankrupted in 1915, and again in 1933 (not getting out until 1948), or that management got so nearsighted that they deferred almost everything. Deferrals went way back. When B-RI bought the Trinity & Brazos Valley between FTW and HOU (which is the shortest line, by the way, and includes the 30 mile Katy segment between DAL and Waxahatchie, where B-RI had rights) in 1931, the contract split the maintenance up on alternating 5-year cycles. You could always count on the track and equipment deteriorating when the Rock had the duties. The Zephyr 9901 fire in December 1944 (on RI's watch) was blamed on poor RI maintenance--the problems went back at least that far. An old acquaintance of mine was one of the last RI roadmasters, and we wound up working on an easement reversion case together. I remember this well...the argument was that the RI had not abandoned a certain stretch of track (it had 6" trees growing up through it and large sections of rail missing!) and one of the attorneys involved asked him why he knew it had been abandoned. He replied "because I abandoned it". Incredulous, the attorney retorted that this track was usable, to which my friend pointed to a couple of straightrailed switches and an adjacent one on the main track missing about 3/4 of its pieces, looked him in the eye and said, "Son, see those switches. I pulled them out myself and put them in the yard so we could run a few trains. I did all the rest of 'em out here the same way. I abandoned it." Rob Peter to pay Paul and try to hang on another day. Such was the Rock. Hope this info is useful.
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