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beaulieu sayeth: "Saunders was the last Chairman of Pennsy, when he became Chairman of Penn Central he lost control of the company and you know what happened." Saunders never really had control. There was no control to be had; each of the two factions were determined not to let the other dominate. Saunders had no real administration experience; he was a lawyer and a merger architect, as noted earlier. When he was on the N&W he could depend on his managers to run the railroad efficiently for him. At PC he had no managers who were interested in doing anything but fighting with each other. It took the formation of Conrail under USRA (not the WWI one, but the 1970s one) to get the railroad shaped up and everybody pulling in the same direction. Anybody who wants to take Saunders to task for the failure of PC after he took over needs to let us know what administrator, available at the time, could have done any better. PC was a catastrophe waiting to happen, and with the ICC and everything else going on at the time, it didn't have a chance. And don't let the partisans fool you; neither NYC nor PRR could have made it on their own. Too much railroad, too little business to support it, too many employees to run it. It took USRA and the changes in regulation that came with it, and the abandonment of a lot of redundant track, to make any difference. Old Timer
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