Great point, also looking back at the ICC 1968 report, you can see that if the terminals were not charged property tax, only fair given the treatment of the competitors, roads like IC were showing a profit on avoidable cost up until 1966-1967. That is simply remarkable given the cross-subsidy to intercity highway travel from the late 1930's WPA highways. Whenever I look at old plan sets for the interstates, that period is the completion date for most of the work along the IC mainlines in my neck of the woods.
Of course the whole point is that somebody must "pay the freight" in a business and since the interstates took away most of the high margin freight there was nothing left to be a base user. So even if the passenger trains were incrementally profitable the rest of the business was unable to recapitalize, well until fuel jumped 300%.
Sam1 I did not say that they did not make money on passenger trains. I said that I did not know.
I did not say that they did not make money on passenger trains. I said that I did not know.
from sam1, initial post:
"Did any of the major railroads earn a profit on their passenger operations? Some trains covered their costs and may have contributed something to net income, but my impression is that most of the railroads rarely if ever made any money on their total passenger operations."
Perhaps you might take the time to read your own posts more carefully before contradicting yourself.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
An observation from a non financial person: it seems that accounting is a game played to make things look as good or as bad as possible to fit a given situation or make a specific point. Thus CPA's and investors and investment bankers not only look at the bottom line, the end point of all monies in, all monies out and all monies left but also pick apart each segment of a business in the same way so that if a small segment (or even a large segment) don't bring the desired profit to the bottom line or costs to administer, make or service no matter how important it is to the final product, it too can be discerend as a not needed cost and be done away with. Thus a railroad branch line which feeds X number of cars to the mainline but cost money to operate can be eliminated despite what it adds to the mainline or at least doesn't take away. Likewise a passenger train which is lighter on the track structure, can be run without really interfering with operations (could actually enhance freight operations by setting a schedule for all to follow), brings in revenue at a break even point or more (at least doesn't lose money) while providing a service and utilizing already owned equipment, existing tracks and signals, may or may not bring down the bottom line but gets eliminated for its own costs rather than being part of the railroad. In other words, the bookkeeping department, the CPA's, can deliver a set of figures to you to serve whatever purpose you have in mind.
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In defense of accountants, their job is to present a consistent set of figures based on GAAP for use by the decisionmakers. They are not the people who make decisions concerning a line of business such as the continued operation of a branch line or passenger train.
Of course accountants don't make the decision...but they do provide the numbers and figures for those who make the decisions and they can skew the numbers as wished by them or by their employers to interpret as needed. But bottom liner investors and often CPA's look for every hand movement to produce income, even profit, or else it is gone. I've dealt with businesses who relied on the their CPA to make their determinations and are no longer in business because of it. I know of one bottom liner who fired a manager because she ordered merchandise for three customers knowing after 15 years of experience that they would buy the items...even had the orders in before the merchandise arrived, But since the bottom liner investor owner didn't understand the business nor could comprehend the profit center, Likewise if accounting shows a branch line operation's out of pocket costs are more than the branch line itself makes, they will abandon it despite the fact that the traffic adds to the bottom line of the mainline operation; i.e., the loss of the traffic might tip the mainline into the red. It is a balancing act that has to be looked at. I think a lot of railroads'bottom liners looking at running from one end of the railroad to the other without stopping have eliminated certain money from the bottom line. In the past I've likened it to a 12 inch water main being fed by a couple one, three and four inch pipes, Eliminate the 3 inch pipe and your 12 inch line is 25% down on capacity.
henry6 In the past I've likened it to a 12 inch water main being fed by a couple one, three and four inch pipes, Eliminate the 3 inch pipe and your 12 inch line is 25% down on capacity.
In the past I've likened it to a 12 inch water main being fed by a couple one, three and four inch pipes, Eliminate the 3 inch pipe and your 12 inch line is 25% down on capacity.
Oops, Henry, you'd better think that analogy through again. A pipes capacity is a function of its internal cross sectional area not its diameter. That area for a 12" ID pipe is about 113 sq. in. and only 7 sq.in. for a 3" ID pipe. All other things being equal, if you eliminate the water fed from the 3" pipe the flow through the 12" one would be reduced by only about 6%.
Mark
I'm not a plumber but I think image of capacity was presented in simple terms if not accurate liquid flow capacities. No other analogy that comes to mind that is as simple to comprehend for this example. I am using the inches to represent number of cars produced a day on a branch line and delivered to the mainline. I know what you guys are saying, but, please give me a better visual than four times three equaling 12.
Henry I'm not a plumber either but I am a Mechanical Engineer.
OK. Then help me with an analogy that fits, is simple, and accurate.
henry6 An observation from a non financial person: it seems that accounting is a game played to make things look as good or as bad as possible to fit a given situation or make a specific point. Thus CPA's and investors and investment bankers not only look at the bottom line, the end point of all monies in, all monies out and all monies left but also pick apart each segment of a business in the same way so that if a small segment (or even a large segment) don't bring the desired profit to the bottom line or costs to administer, make or service no matter how important it is to the final product, it too can be discerend as a not needed cost and be done away with. Thus a railroad branch line which feeds X number of cars to the mainline but cost money to operate can be eliminated despite what it adds to the mainline or at least doesn't take away. Likewise a passenger train which is lighter on the track structure, can be run without really interfering with operations (could actually enhance freight operations by setting a schedule for all to follow), brings in revenue at a break even point or more (at least doesn't lose money) while providing a service and utilizing already owned equipment, existing tracks and signals, may or may not bring down the bottom line but gets eliminated for its own costs rather than being part of the railroad. In other words, the bookkeeping department, the CPA's, can deliver a set of figures to you to serve whatever purpose you have in mind.
First of all, keep in mind,that most abandonments in recent years are "no-brainers". They involve lines that either have no on-line traffic at all, or which have so little traffic that they are clealy lost causes. These are typically handled by regulatory "exemptions" with little or no costing.
However, where a line generates more than a minimal amount of traffic, STB/ICC regulations have long required that the railroad to show that the costs produced by the line exceed the revenues produced by the line. To make this showing, abandonment regulations require that the railroad take account of ALL of the revenue that is attributable to the traffic generated by a branch. In other words, the railroad must assume that, if a line is abandoned, it will lose BOTH the revenue generated on the branch, AND the revenue that is generated by the branch line traffic on its main lines (unless the railroad can show that it has another way to continue handling the traffic post abandonment). Further, on the cost side, the railroad can rely only upon costs that will actually be avoided by the abandonment. It can't assume that some amount of main line investment determined by an accounting allocation will be saved. In fact, in the vast majority of abandonments where a cost/revenue study is made, there is no savings in main line investment at all - the "off branch" savings are all operating related costs generated by the branch line on teh railroad's other lines. True, there are some formulas that are used to easily make an estimate of the "off branch" costs saved by an abandonment, but they are designed to roughly capture the operating costs that will actually be avoided by the loss of the branch line traffic, not some arbitrary accounting proration of total costs.
Now, of course, a railroad doesn't have to follow regulatory costing models in making an internal decision whether to abandon a line or discontinue a service (although it must meet the regulatory requirements to get whatever regulatory authorization is required). But I can tell you from personal experience that the internal criteria are pretty close to the regulatory criteria. That makes sense, since management's ultimate question in deciding whether to abandon a line is whether the company will be better off or worse off as a whole if the line is abandoned, which is exactly what the regulatory costing model is designed to show. I can also tell you from personal experience that railroad management considering an abandonment takes a very close look at the particular line involved, the contribution (if any) its traffic makes to the railroad as a whole, its prospects (if any) for future traffic, and its potential strategic value before making a decision to seek abandonment. It is definitely not a decision that's driven by accountants.
Falcon: a nice informative response. I wonder how passenger service was treated in terms of avoidable costs and overhead allocation?
Falcon48 This comment isn't consistent with the costing procedures railroads use in abandonment and discontinuance cases. First of all, keep in mind,that most abandonments in recent years are "no-brainers". They involve lines that either have no on-line traffic at all, or which have so little traffic that they are clealy lost causes. These are typically handled by regulatory "exemptions" with little or no costing. However, where a line generates more than a minimal amount of traffic, STB/ICC regulations have long required that the railroad to show that the costs produced by the line exceed the revenues produced by the line. To make this showing, abandonment regulations require that the railroad take account of ALL of the revenue that is attributable to the traffic generated by a branch. In other words, the railroad must assume that, if a line is abandoned, it will lose BOTH the revenue generated on the branch, AND the revenue that is generated by the branch line traffic on its main lines (unless the railroad can show that it has another way to continue handling the traffic post abandonment). Further, on the cost side, the railroad can rely only upon costs that will actually be avoided by the abandonment. It can't assume that some amount of main line investment determined by an accounting allocation will be saved. In fact, in the vast majority of abandonments where a cost/revenue study is made, there is no savings in main line investment at all - the "off branch" savings are all operating related costs generated by the branch line on teh railroad's other lines. True, there are some formulas that are used to easily make an estimate of the "off branch" costs saved by an abandonment, but they are designed to roughly capture the operating costs that will actually be avoided by the loss of the branch line traffic, not some arbitrary accounting proration of total costs. Now, of course, a railroad doesn't have to follow regulatory costing models in making an internal decision whether to abandon a line or discontinue a service (although it must meet the regulatory requirements to get whatever regulatory authorization is required). But I can tell you from personal experience that the internal criteria are pretty close to the regulatory criteria. That makes sense, since management's ultimate question in deciding whether to abandon a line is whether the company will be better off or worse off as a whole if the line is abandoned, which is exactly what the regulatory costing model is designed to show. I can also tell you from personal experience that railroad management considering an abandonment takes a very close look at the particular line involved, the contribution (if any) its traffic makes to the railroad as a whole, its prospects (if any) for future traffic, and its potential strategic value before making a decision to seek abandonment. It is definitely not a decision that's driven by accountants.
This comment isn't consistent with the costing procedures railroads use in abandonment and discontinuance cases.
Amen Falcon. You have provided the most accurate and concise description of the abandonment decision making process that I have seen to date. I have added the highlights above to emphasize what I believe sums up the entire matter.
One of the issues that drove passenger train costs was capitalization - the cars had to be replaced sometime, or at least rebuilt. An awful lot of equipment in use in the 1950s was at or near the end of its economic life. New passenger equipement was competing for capital with diesel locomotives, line enhancements and all of the other stuff necessary for running railroads. The slowdown of orders to the carbuilders resulted in the price per car growing a lot faster than the price of almost any other capital item, at least partly because the carbuilders had to ramp up and shut down their lines. By the time the last pre-Amtrak cars were built the cost of an ordinary coach was close to the cost of a new locomotive.
Even in the face of this some railroads bought new equipment into the 1960s. Sometimes the companies saw a good payback - C&NW was able to drop a dozen or so trains in exchange for a couple of new bilevel 400s in 1958. Most railroads still carrying passengers just tried to stretch the life of their fleets. A pretty good sized chunk of Amtrak's expanded heritage fleet running in the mid 1970s were cars built prior to WWII.
One think I have wondered about is Amtrak's push to replace its "heritage fleet," the cars it acquired from private railroads that ran passenger service.
When I rode the Penn Central between Providence and New York the cars seemed to be not all that old. They had reclining seats which worked and were sheathed in corrugated stainless steel. What they seemed most in need of was a good cleaning. Replacing upholstery would not have hurt either. Probably the steam heating systems would have needed to be replaced but other than that they seemed to me to have a fair amount of useful life. The only real improvements I can see in the new coaches are the individual reading lights, the electric outlets and the wi-fi that is available today. These certainly could have been retrofitted.
The reason I have encountered for replacing the coaches is that the Amfleet ones are designed to make us think we are in an airplane. This to my mind is a mistake; I refuse to be ashamed of the fact that I choose to take the train.
I'm just a guy who rides trains and naïve about most technical information. Never the less I wonder if Amtrak would have been better off by keeping at least some of the north east corridor coaches instead of immediately buying all new ones.
John WR One think I have wondered about is Amtrak's push to replace its "heritage fleet," the cars it acquired from private railroads that ran passenger service.
"If thats the case then your also alleging they submitted fradulent Annual Stockholder reports to the public and if that happened my question would be........where was the SEC enforcement over decades and decades when this happened?"
So where in any of the posts did I allege that the passenger railroads had submitted fradulent annual stockholder reports. I referred to the "then" accounting and SEC reporting standards as being different from the current standards. I did not state or imply that they could be applied retroactively, since by the time they were adopted the railroads were out of the passenger business.
"Some trains covered their costs and may have contributed something to net income, but my impression is that most of the railroads rarely if ever made any money on their total passenger operations."
An impression is different from empirical knowledge. Having an impression and knowing are two different processes. An impression (noun) is defined by Webster as an idea, feeling, or opinion about something or someone. Knowledge (noun) is defined as facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. Both definitions are from the New Oxford American Dictionary.
To say that I had an impression and subsequently clarified it with I don't know is not a contradiction.
Moreover, to make money on a passenger train or any other train, the train would have to cover it operating costs plus the allocated other burdens, i.e. administration, depreciation, etc. Accordingly, it would be quite possible to cover the operating costs, ala the Acela, but not make money on a train or the whole fleet because of insufficient funds to cover the other costs.
First, the cars Amtrak inherited from participating railroads were anywhere from 10 to 50 years old then. The popular political posture was that Amtrak was formed to kill off the passenger train, so the age of the equipment meant little to many. Second, the newest cars were the Metroliner cars built by aeronautical engineers and not railroad engineers thus were more like the tubular designs of a plane's fuselage; new equipment was fashioned after them. With little funding and getting funding and direction from the Congress, Amtrak limped along utilizing and acquiring used Heritage style equipment when good stuff came along but eventually did have to buy new. There were attempts to step outside the box of complacency with mixed results: the Rohr Turbos from France were long term duds but the Spanish Talgo caught on in the Pacific Northwest. Acela is the latest new style for what it is. What is the next generation of American passenger car? Gonna be fun to wait and watch.....
I'm going to defend someone...I think Sam1...by saying that bookkeeping and accounting is as much political as anything. As for passenger services, it is certainly political as well as chosen practicality based on what the railroad wanted to accomplish with passenger service within the framework of the politically charged ICC. Did the railroads cheat and deceive and keep two sets of books? That's probably more a philosophical question and answer than one of fact and truth. It was a case of necessity to show one set of figures to the ICC and government and at least one other for the stockholders and maybe a compromised third set for either extreme to fall back on without being criminals.
rcdrye One of the issues that drove passenger train costs was capitalization - the cars had to be replaced sometime, or at least rebuilt. An awful lot of equipment in use in the 1950s was at or near the end of its economic life. New passenger equipement was competing for capital with diesel locomotives, line enhancements and all of the other stuff necessary for running railroads. The slowdown of orders to the carbuilders resulted in the price per car growing a lot faster than the price of almost any other capital item, at least partly because the carbuilders had to ramp up and shut down their lines. By the time the last pre-Amtrak cars were built the cost of an ordinary coach was close to the cost of a new locomotive. Even in the face of this some railroads bought new equipment into the 1960s. Sometimes the companies saw a good payback - C&NW was able to drop a dozen or so trains in exchange for a couple of new bilevel 400s in 1958. Most railroads still carrying passengers just tried to stretch the life of their fleets. A pretty good sized chunk of Amtrak's expanded heritage fleet running in the mid 1970s were cars built prior to WWII.
For a private enterprise railroad, a line or service that's creating a negative cash flow, without hope of a turnaround, should, of course, be discontinued as quickly as possible. But that's not necessarily true of a line or service that's producing a positive cash flow, but an inadequate return on investment. Rather, the railroad may be better off it it continues this line of business until it requires additional investment. From a strictly economics point of view, continuing the business so long as no significant additional investment is required makes sense as long as the net operating income exceeds the return on the net liquidation value of the assets which the railroad could realize by discontinuing the service (in other words, as long as the net operating income is greater than the income the railroad could receive by liqudating the assets and investing the proceeds elsewhere). I rather suspect that some railroads in the 1960's were in the "negative cash flow" situation, but others were still in a position where they were still willing to provide the service as long as no significant new investment was required. Of course, the service would ultimately have become unsustainable.
But there's also a regulatory factor that would come into play in the decision to join AMTRAK. The regulators might not approve a railroad's request to get out of passenger service when it became unsustainable. Certainly, the railroads' experience with passenger "train-offs" wouldn't have given them any confidence that they would be able to quickly get out of the passenger business when the traffic fell further off or additional investment was required (as I recall, a railroad which didn't join AMTRAK also had to continue providing its passenger service for 5 years). This was undoubtedly a factor in the decision of some railroads which otherwise might not have joined Amtrak in 1971 (e.g., Santa Fe) to join. A few railroads also had strategic reasons for not joining (Southern, DRGW) or financial reasons (CRIP), but that's a different story
henry6 I'm going to defend someone...I think Sam1...by saying that bookkeeping and accounting is as much political as anything. As for passenger services, it is certainly political as well as chosen practicality based on what the railroad wanted to accomplish with passenger service within the framework of the politically charged ICC. Did the railroads cheat and deceive and keep two sets of books? That's probably more a philosophical question and answer than one of fact and truth. It was a case of necessity to show one set of figures to the ICC and government and at least one other for the stockholders and maybe a compromised third set for either extreme to fall back on without being criminals.
schlimm Falcon: a nice informative response. I wonder how passenger service was treated in terms of avoidable costs and overhead allocation?
(i) the costs ICC would accept would probably be only those costs which the railroad would actually save by discontinuing the train. In other words, if a railroad were discontinuing 1 of 3 trains on the line, it wouldn't be able claim a savings of 1/3 of the ticket agent expense, if the ticket agents all had to be kept on to service the remaining trains.
(ii) There would be no accounting allocation of overheads. Overheads wouldn't be treated as chargeable to the train unless they could actually be avoided by the discontinuance.
In the event, none of this would probably matter very much in a "train off"case, because a railroad usually wouldn't seek one unless the train was generating a negative cash flow. The disputes in these cases typically centered around the public's "need" for the service
When Amtrak was formed railroads were required to join unless they had discontinued trains by a certain date before the existence of Amtrak or elected not to join but would continue operating their own train or trains for at least a year...Southern and DRGW were two that did not join and continued operating until folding into Amtrak. Train off petitions were not any different otherwise.
What law(s) compelled the railroads to offer passenger services?
I agree with your assessment of cash flows, inadequate returns, and alternative opportunities. Other than in a government bureaucracy, who in their right mind would compel a private business to offer a service that was pushing the business to the brink of extinction?
If Amtrak had not been created, what provision of the law would have prevented the railroads from proceeding with the train off petitions until all the trains had been discontinued?
At one point the PRR wanted to discontinue the Clevelander. I don't remember the dates. The regulator said no dice. So the railroad pared it down to a P70 coach (I rode it from New York to Altoona) and one sleeper. Subsequently, as I remember it, the railroad was able to convince the regulator that the train was losing money.
The original charters prescribe that the railroads are"esteemed a public highway of freight and passengers." I include the link to the original 1859 charter of the PRR. (see page 18, section 21).
http://books.google.com/books?id=W1IdAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Yes, the original charters prescribed the railroad provide passenger and freight service. After the formation of the ICC and state commissions services were overseen and authorized through them including pricing of freight and passenger services. To withdraw a train or service required permission from the ICC if interstate commerce was involved and state commissions if only intrastate trains were involved as long as there was no connection to interstate trains or it terminated or traveled through another state. This was important when it came to commuter services which were provide in only one state. Thus the Erie needed only to go the the NJ Public Utilities Commission to rid itself off a lot of its commuter trains but to the ICC to effect discontinuance of Port Jervis and Spring Valley services (also needing the blessings of the NY Public Service Commission). The ICC I believe was asked to approve service plans like summer only seasonal trains so that removal of the train from the schedule in September did not require hearings. Total discontinuance of services and abandonment of tracks were always full of hearings. The concept and organizing of the National Passenger Rail Corporation set up an agreed upon system and timetable for removing train services which did not entail a long set of hearings, etc. It wasn't law, but a promise to a charter and level of service which the charter supposedly held the railroad to. As I often say here, things before 1970 were quite different than after 1970 and the formation of Conrail and Amtrak...everything from orginization, operating rules, unions, and attitudes. I understand that many don't understand the major philosophical differences Conrail and Amtrak brought to railroading from boardroom to ballast.
A slight clarification. The original charters were acts of law passed by the respective state assemblies and legislatures.
Sam1 What law(s) compelled the railroads to offer passenger services? I agree with your assessment of cash flows, inadequate returns, and alternative opportunities. However, other than in the minds of government bureaucrats, who in their right mind would compel a private business to offer a service that was pushing the business to the brink of extinction? If Amtrak had not been created, what provision of the law would have prevented the railroads from proceeding with the train off petitions until all the trains had been discontinued? At one point the PRR wanted to discontinue the Clevelander. I don't remember the dates. The regulator said no dice. So the railroad pared it down to a P70 coach (I rode it from New York to Altoona) and one sleeper. Subsequently, as I remember it, the railroad was able to convince the regulator that the train was losing money.
I agree with your assessment of cash flows, inadequate returns, and alternative opportunities. However, other than in the minds of government bureaucrats, who in their right mind would compel a private business to offer a service that was pushing the business to the brink of extinction?
The reason that railroads were not free to simply discontinue passenger services as the passengers went away was because of state regulatory statutes which required railroads to obtain regulatory permission to discontinue passenger service, and state regulatory policies which required this authority to be obtained on a train by train basis. Passenger discontinuances were generally not a matter of Federal regulation (unless a passenger discontinuance was part of a rail line abandonment) until the Transportation Act of 1958. The 1958 law gave the Interstate Commerce Commission the authority to override state regulatory refusals to permit passenger train discontinuances. It was passed in direct response to the reluctance of state regulators to permit discontinuance of money losing passenger services(usually because of percieved public "need" for the services). The 1958 Act helped, but passenger train discontinuances still had to be handled in an lengthy, train by train basis.
Still, it might have remained this way, with passenger services gradually fading away on a train by train basis, but for the Penn Central bankruptcy. That brought matters to a head. Without getting into a lot of boring legal discusion, suffice it to say that government regulatory action which forces a business operating at an overall loss to continuing offering money losing services raises serious constitutiional issues under the 5th Amendment (that's the amendment which, among other things, prohibits the government from "taking" private property without paying just compensation) . The formation of Amtrak was a direct result of PC's threatened discontinuance of all intercity passenger services west of Buffalo and Harrisburg. This was a real threat. If the bankruptcy court authorized it (which, given PC's financial condition, was almost a foregone conclusion), the regulators could not have constitutionally prevented it without payment of "just compensation" to PC (which, under the laws of the time, they had no authority to do). Amtrak was created as a solution to both the immediate PC problem and the overall passenger problem which had long bedeviled policymakers.
I was merely answering sam1's question, "what laws compelled the railroads to offer passenger services?" The original charters were those laws that applied. "Starting in the 1850s, but with greater intensity after 1865, many states sought to regulate railroad tariffs by legislating changes in railroad charters or by establishing a regulatory authority to set price ceilings." 1887 marked a gradual shift in regulation to the federal ICC level.
http://www.nber.org/chapters/c6571.pdf
It seems here and in other postings and discussions, the past is totally dismissed as having a bearing on what has evolved...evolved being the key. Charters started the industry, simple steam locomotives replaced horses and mules, diesels and electric locomotives succeeded them. Smoke on the horizon was the signal system before telegraph train orders and block signals (at first semaphore blade, then colored lights), wooden rails with metal straps were first and then iron then steel rails...a lot happened and had to happen to reach today. To dismiss or not acknowledge or understand the past does not give a complete picture of why we have arrived at today. I have met too many railfans today who believe railroading started with Conrail, scanners, and digital cameras to take pictures of the trains and have no concept of what happened before then nor seem to care. Even when discussing today's railroading and railfanning, one must acknowledge the history of the railroad and its technologies and rules as well as the evolution of the railfan as we know him today. Schlimm, you're right: the charter was the first regulation of the railroad giving it both authority to build and operate and to charge it with providing services to carry both freight and passengers. Farmers in the late 1800's got upset with the monopoly of the railroads in charges for carrying their agricultural products and formed the Grange to fight the railroads which led to the formation of the Interstate Commerce Commission along with the attending state agencies. This is evolution of the "laws" governing the operation of trains, the setting of fares and tariffs, the building and abandoning of tracks and services. If that is not acknowledged then the whole of the story and reason is not known or understood.
Exactly, henry6! The evolution of American railroading is a complex history from its beginnings to now, involving various players, including, but not limited to the railroad corporations, customers and governments. And the present cannot be understood if that history is dismissed in absolutist language as irrelevant.
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