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Persistant little D&RG

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Posted by snagletooth on Saturday, June 21, 2008 3:37 AM

 While this is mostly a post to get this in "My Forums" (this is a REALLY great read!), I thought I'd add an uneducated theory on Gould. Being thrust into the man of the Family bread and butter, the Mopac, maybe(?!) Gould's idea was protection of himself and MP. Many rail owners had been in the game a long time and (in his mind, and probably in reality) had forgotten more tricks to ruin the competition than he knew. By expanding his reach, he would guarantee his home road friendly connections to the east and west, albeit somewhat out and around. It would also make him a little to large for someone to get an easy run on him, or his railroad, in the stock market. Any competitor would hard struck to cut off connections for the MP.

 Perhaps it wasn't an attempt at large scale provado that drove him, but a childlike sense of fear of failure of losing the family bread and butter? I don't think he had any thoughts of creating a transcontinental railroad, or even trying create a bull-run on the stock market, just a cub's strange attempt at trying to protect the MP from the big bears of the industry.

Just a thought...     

Edit: ooh, ooh, ooh, just had an after-thought (always after the the original post, isn't it? And it keeps this on-topic). Gould obviously wanting and needing a guaranteed friendly western connection, probably couldn't afford ATSF, and Harriman's roads were clearly not an option (Harriman being the biggest threat to Gould and MP in the west), and Hill's lines going way to far north before going west, Rio Grande would have been his only option. Woo-hoo!, but Rio Grande didn't go anywhere near California. Gould, it seems, would have had no choice but to acquire the Rio Grande and build the WP. Any thoughts on Hill having maybe quietly pushing the young Gould to take such a chance to annoy Harriman, and give his own system a California connection in the process (further irritating Harriman, I'm sure!). All with Gould's money, not his own. All the reward, and none of the risk, and all he had to do was convince a young, inexperienced Gould that Harriman was a real threat thim him he HAD to build to California to protect himself and his Mopac. Then build a few short miles to connect to it. I'm sure Hill was salivating at the thought of Gould (not just the Rio Grande) going bankrupt building the WP and upgrading the RG, then step in and buy up the RG/WP quick to put him into Northern California via the Q at Denver and the NP at Berber, Ca. Even if he had nothing to do with, he had to salivating at the thought. I would have been... hehehe!Evil [}:)]

 A win-win situation. If Gould succeeds, he has a friendly connection to N. Cal. for two of his roads (which, he did). If he fails, Hill steps in and buys it all up and finishes it himself.  

 I'm probably going off the far end, but rivalries (in any major industry of the time) in those days seem to me to have been as much personal as they were business. Pirate [oX)] 

  I guess basically what I'm asking what about the possiblity that a young and inexperinced Gould may not have been a man of great, yet misunderstood, forsight, but boy played by the type of people he was hoping to ward of, hoping for his quick demise.

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Posted by erikem on Saturday, June 21, 2008 1:09 PM
 snagletooth wrote:

Edit: ooh, ooh, ooh, just had an after-thought (always after the the original post, isn't it? And it keeps this on-topic). Gould obviously wanting and needing a guaranteed friendly western connection, probably couldn't afford ATSF, and Harriman's roads were clearly not an option (Harriman being the biggest threat to Gould and MP in the west), and Hill's lines going way to far north before going west, Rio Grande would have been his only option. Woo-hoo!, but Rio Grande didn't go anywhere near California. Gould, it seems, would have had no choice but to acquire the Rio Grande and build the WP. Any thoughts on Hill having maybe quietly pushing the young Gould to take such a chance to annoy Harriman, and give his own system a California connection in the process (further irritating Harriman, I'm sure!). All with Gould's money, not his own. All the reward, and none of the risk, and all he had to do was convince a young, inexperienced Gould that Harriman was a real threat thim him he HAD to build to California to protect himself and his Mopac. Then build a few short miles to connect to it. I'm sure Hill was salivating at the thought of Gould (not just the Rio Grande) going bankrupt building the WP and upgrading the RG, then step in and buy up the RG/WP quick to put him into Northern California via the Q at Denver and the NP at Berber, Ca. Even if he had nothing to do with, he had to salivating at the thought. I would have been... hehehe!Evil [}:)]

Only problem is that the Inland Gateway was completed in the early 1930's, not the 1900's. By the way, it was the Great Northern, not the NP that connected to the WP at Bieber. 

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Posted by Murphy Siding on Saturday, June 21, 2008 10:28 PM
 Railway Man wrote:
  1. lower cost of equipment (because it's smaller)
  2. lower cost of grading and construction of an embankment to support the track (because it's narrower)
  3. lower cost of track structure and bridges (because the equipment is lighter).

RWM

  I've never quite understood the the cost efficiencies of some of this.  For example, if you are building to a 3 foot gauge, verses 4'-8" gauge, we're only talking 20" narrower.  So the ties could be 20" shorter, and the grading/embankment 20" narrower.  Was that a big savings? Was there a big savings in building the track structure and bridges to a wimpier standard?  What about the equipment be smaller?  Was that more expensive because it was *custom*, or was everthing in that age custom made anyway?  Sometimes it's difficult to view 19th century things from a 21st century perpective.

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Posted by erikem on Saturday, June 21, 2008 11:17 PM

Murph,

In addition to 3' rolling stock being narrower than standard gauge rolling stock, the cars and locomotives would typically be not be as tall as their standard gauge equivalents. Also figure that the width would come close to scaling proportionally with gauge for stability reasons. The upshot is that a 3' gauge car or locomotive may weigh half of a standard guage car or locomotive, which would allow for much lighter rail - bridges could be made lighter as well. With allowances for sharper curves and steeper grades, a narrow gauge line becomes much cheaper to build than a standard gauge line.

The downer is that the narrow gauge line is much more expensive to operate... 

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Posted by Mr_Ash on Sunday, June 22, 2008 1:36 AM

had to search a bit to find a picture

IDK to me 36" narrow gauge feels more human size... standard gauge is just fricken huge and I'm 6'3!

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Posted by arbfbe on Sunday, June 22, 2008 10:59 AM
The narrow gauge vs the standard gauge argument went on in the railroad trade press in the 1850s through about 1900 in a form which would do this forum proud.  Proponents on both sides were set in their arguments and carried on editorial and personal battles right to then end of major railroad construction.  Niether side was willing to give an inch.  Economically the standard gauge side won the war but I am sure there would be individuals who would argue that the biggest mistake the UP and CP made was building their transcontinental railroad to standard gauge instead of 3' standards.  The flip side is from the minority who believed in 5' and 6' gauge standards, if standard gauge was good, wide gauge would be better.  If people had the forsight to look into what railroads would become by 2008 they could have noted the standard gaugers were too narrow minded to build for the future and not the present.  
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Posted by mudchicken on Sunday, June 22, 2008 11:20 AM

 arbfbe wrote:
The narrow gauge vs the standard gauge argument went on in the railroad trade press in the 1850s through about 1900 in a form which would do this forum proud.  Proponents on both sides were set in their arguments and carried on editorial and personal battles right to then end of major railroad construction.  Niether side was willing to give an inch.  Economically the standard gauge side won the war but I am sure there would be individuals who would argue that the biggest mistake the UP and CP made was building their transcontinental railroad to standard gauge instead of 3' standards.  The flip side is from the minority who believed in 5' and 6' gauge standards, if standard gauge was good, wide gauge would be better.  If people had the forsight to look into what railroads would become by 2008 they could have noted the standard gaugers were too narrow minded to build for the future and not the present.  

Professor George W. Hilton has gotten into this subject in detail for those who cannot seem to grasp what RWM is talking about. Best description and analysis would be in "American Narrow Gauge Railroads" Stanford University Press 1994.

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Posted by Murphy Siding on Sunday, June 22, 2008 2:02 PM
 mudchicken wrote:

Professor George W. Hilton has gotten into this subject in detail for those who cannot seem to grasp what RWM is talking about. Best description and analysis would be in "American Narrow Gauge Railroads" Stanford University Press 1994.

I may not always grasp what RWM and others are talking about, but I do recognize a good book recommendation when I see it.Wink [;)]  Thanks mudchicken!

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Posted by martin.knoepfel on Sunday, June 22, 2008 2:18 PM
Narrow gauge rolling-stock does not need to be smaller than standard gauge. South Africa runs pretty large and heavy trains on cape-gauge
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Posted by erikem on Monday, June 23, 2008 12:11 AM
 mudchicken wrote:

Professor George W. Hilton has gotten into this subject in detail for those who cannot seem to grasp what RWM is talking about. Best description and analysis would be in "American Narrow Gauge Railroads" Stanford University Press 1994.

A very fine book indeed. The format of the book is similar to his 1964 book on electric interurbans, though production values had improved in the intervening 30 years. I was impressed by how the book was laid out, done by someone with very good taste (might have something to do with D.E. Knuth being a Stanford prof).The book is filled with all sorts of interesting details about the history and technology of the narrow gauge lines.

Hilton also touches upon the subject of wide gauge RR's to complete the coverage as to why standard gauge is standard in this country. One common problem to both narrow and wide gauge lines was the lack of the network effect - i.e. a standard gauge car could go to hundreds of different RR's all over North America, where narrow or wide gauge cars could at best be intechanged with a couple of lines over a limited geographical area.

Makes me wonder what the US would have been like if we went for the Erie's 6 foot gauge... 

Which reminds me - one advantage of narrow gauge (and a disadvantage for wide gauge) is that the axles  end up being shorter, lighter and stiffer for the same diameter.

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Posted by zardoz on Monday, June 23, 2008 9:56 AM
 Mr_Ash wrote:

had to search a bit to find a picture

IDK to me 36" narrow gauge feels more human size... standard gauge is just fricken huge and I'm 6'3!

Looks like a "N"-scale car next to a "HO"-scale car.

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Posted by selector on Monday, June 23, 2008 10:07 AM

Yes, and the trucks, themselves, would be lighter (probably...if they accommodate smaller axles) which means less unsprung weight, and that would probably be easier on the rails? 

Erik?

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Posted by CSSHEGEWISCH on Monday, June 23, 2008 10:16 AM
 selector wrote:

Yes, and the trucks, themselves, would be lighter (probably...if they accommodate smaller axles) which means less unsprung weight, and that would probably be easier on the rails? 

Erik?

Less unsprung weight would be easier on the rail structure, but remember that the whole rail structure is also lighter to begin with.  Cape gauge (3'6") carries some heavy tonnages in South Africa and Queensland, but the engineering is also much more robust than what most of us picture for narrow gauge.

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Posted by selector on Monday, June 23, 2008 11:29 AM

Thanks, Paul.

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Posted by mudchicken on Monday, June 23, 2008 2:49 PM
Remember that the N/G beancounters had their joebobs build some rather flimsy bridges on their narrow gauge lines and they constantly were falling through bridges.
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Alfred E. Perlman
Posted by Murphy Siding on Monday, June 23, 2008 7:33 PM
     One last question, before this thread slips off into oblivion.  Alfred E. Perlman played a central role in PennCentral.  Most accounts note that he was hired by the NYC based on what he did for the Rio Grande.  They never really go into detail what he actually did for DRGW.  What was his role, that he received such high marks for?

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Posted by Railway Man on Monday, June 23, 2008 8:27 PM

 Murphy Siding wrote:
     One last question, before this thread slips off into oblivion.  Alfred E. Perlman played a central role in PennCentral.  Most accounts note that he was hired by the NYC based on what he did for the Rio Grande.  They never really go into detail what he actually did for DRGW.  What was his role, that he received such high marks for?

I've never heard specifics.  It's an interesting question and I would like to know the answer, too.

P.S. -- as long as you keep asking questions, you'll keep this thread alive.

RWM

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Posted by Railway Man on Monday, June 23, 2008 8:32 PM
 CSSHEGEWISCH wrote:
 selector wrote:

Yes, and the trucks, themselves, would be lighter (probably...if they accommodate smaller axles) which means less unsprung weight, and that would probably be easier on the rails? 

Erik?

Less unsprung weight would be easier on the rail structure, but remember that the whole rail structure is also lighter to begin with.  Cape gauge (3'6") carries some heavy tonnages in South Africa and Queensland, but the engineering is also much more robust than what most of us picture for narrow gauge.

Indeed!  Spoornet is quite a rail system.  It and the Western Australia iron-ore haulers show what can be done with a single-purpose line versus the compromises inherent in a network such as North America.  North America is fortunate that its early builders were so cash poor as it forced them away from emulating British practice with its emphasis on grade and curve minima, thus little investment was made in a fixed plant conceived for a small loading gauge.

RWM

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Posted by chad thomas on Monday, June 23, 2008 8:37 PM
I recall reading where he was responsible for introduceing spectoral analasys of diesel engine oil to determine when major componets were near failure (due to metalic residues in the lube oil).
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Narrow-Gauge vs. Standard
Posted by Mr_Ash on Monday, June 23, 2008 8:44 PM

Found a better Standard gauge vs Narrow gauge photo, this one is of D&RGW passenger car's, those NG coaches arnt that small. The NG coach on the left is 319 with the closed vestibules from when it was modernized for the "San Juan" trains

http://photoswest.org/cgi-bin/imager?00401110+RR-1110

Also here is one showing SG vs NG Cabeese and duel gauge track in Alamosa

http://www.drgw.org/features/hall/ala08.htm

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Posted by Railway Man on Monday, June 23, 2008 9:01 PM
 snagletooth wrote:

 While this is mostly a post to get this in "My Forums" (this is a REALLY great read!), I thought I'd add an uneducated theory on Gould. Being thrust into the man of the Family bread and butter, the Mopac, maybe(?!) Gould's idea was protection of himself and MP. Many rail owners had been in the game a long time and (in his mind, and probably in reality) had forgotten more tricks to ruin the competition than he knew. By expanding his reach, he would guarantee his home road friendly connections to the east and west, albeit somewhat out and around. It would also make him a little to large for someone to get an easy run on him, or his railroad, in the stock market. Any competitor would hard struck to cut off connections for the MP.

 Perhaps it wasn't an attempt at large scale provado that drove him, but a childlike sense of fear of failure of losing the family bread and butter? I don't think he had any thoughts of creating a transcontinental railroad, or even trying create a bull-run on the stock market, just a cub's strange attempt at trying to protect the MP from the big bears of the industry.

Just a thought...     

Edit: ooh, ooh, ooh, just had an after-thought (always after the the original post, isn't it? And it keeps this on-topic). Gould obviously wanting and needing a guaranteed friendly western connection, probably couldn't afford ATSF, and Harriman's roads were clearly not an option (Harriman being the biggest threat to Gould and MP in the west), and Hill's lines going way to far north before going west, Rio Grande would have been his only option. Woo-hoo!, but Rio Grande didn't go anywhere near California. Gould, it seems, would have had no choice but to acquire the Rio Grande and build the WP. Any thoughts on Hill having maybe quietly pushing the young Gould to take such a chance to annoy Harriman, and give his own system a California connection in the process (further irritating Harriman, I'm sure!). All with Gould's money, not his own. All the reward, and none of the risk, and all he had to do was convince a young, inexperienced Gould that Harriman was a real threat thim him he HAD to build to California to protect himself and his Mopac. Then build a few short miles to connect to it. I'm sure Hill was salivating at the thought of Gould (not just the Rio Grande) going bankrupt building the WP and upgrading the RG, then step in and buy up the RG/WP quick to put him into Northern California via the Q at Denver and the NP at Berber, Ca. Even if he had nothing to do with, he had to salivating at the thought. I would have been... hehehe!Evil [}:)]

 A win-win situation. If Gould succeeds, he has a friendly connection to N. Cal. for two of his roads (which, he did). If he fails, Hill steps in and buys it all up and finishes it himself.  

 I'm probably going off the far end, but rivalries (in any major industry of the time) in those days seem to me to have been as much personal as they were business. Pirate [oX)] 

  I guess basically what I'm asking what about the possiblity that a young and inexperinced Gould may not have been a man of great, yet misunderstood, forsight, but boy played by the type of people he was hoping to ward of, hoping for his quick demise.

You bring up concepts that are true but are case specific.  In the case of the D&RGW, they don't apply.  Here's why.

In the era of George Gould, the vast preponderance of traffic was local -- a term of art that means "originates and terminates on the same railroad," as opposed to interchange.  Thus for the MoPac, a big, sprawling system, so long as it had a substantial presence in its own territory, the threat of an end-run by another system was not crucial.  Where railroads competed sharply in that era was for traffic between small towns and large cities where the move was local to two or more railroads, e.g., wheat moving from Fort Scott, Kansas, to Kansas City.  It could move on either Santa Fe or MoPac as a local move, and the rate and service competition pitted the Santa Fe-served elevator in Fort Scott vs. the MoPac-served elevator in Fort Scott.  Both would access the same or equivalent terminal elevator in Kansas City. 

Only when railroads wanted to support a line with thin local support whose purpose was to bring traffic to and from a point of articulation would transcon-level traffic competition apply.  The example in the MoPac's case would the same line that passed through Fort Scott, which encountered increasingly desolate territory beyond Lindsborg, Kansas -- about the western limit of European style spring-planting, rain-supported agriculture -- until for practical purposes it was in a desert, before reaching the articulation point of Pueblo.  To make that line pay, the MoPac needed interchange traffic with the D&RGW.  The D&RGW was a traffic-originator.  Its traffic base was coal, metals, livestock, and some products of farms that it either delivered to the cities at its endpoints, or to connections.  The D&RGW as originator of the traffic had some choice of where it went.  To the east, it could hand off to the C&S or Santa Fe at Trinidad for points southeast, at Pueblo to MoPac or the Santa Fe at Pueblo for points east, or haul north to Colorado Springs to the Rock Island for points east, or to the UP or CB&Q at Denver for points east (or the Rock Island, too).  As Pueblo was the first point of articulation reached east of the Rocky Mountains, the principal choice for traffic flowing out of the mountains was the Santa Fe or MoPac.  For practical reasons the D&RGW preferred the MoPac as it had no parallel routes where it competed with the MoPac whereas it was paralleled from Denver to Trinidad by the Santa Fe, and as far west as Canon City, too.  The MoPac (Gould) controlled the D&RGW at an early date to protect this profitable business.

Now we come to the Western Pacific.  The point often overlooked is that the D&RGW was not viable as a transcontinental railroad until about 1928-29It was simply too slow, too expensive to operate, and too fragile to be a competitor on anything other than paper.  Thus in 1902 or so, when Gould conceived of building the WP, there could have been no intent of protecting an existing transcontinental traffic flow to the MP via the D&RGW, because there was virtually none.

If Gould's plan was to build a transcontinental railroad -- and there's little evidence but hearsay to support that conclusion -- then building the WP was only half the problem solved.  He still had a gap between Salt Lake City and Pueblo that was filled only by a transcon-in-being; it was not practical for use.  From an engineering and operating perspective, what the D&RGW had was a right-of-way already acquired, and a track just good enough to run construction trains to build a new railroad more-or-less in the same right-of-way.  Nor did Gould have the assets to mortgage or cash in the bank to pay for rebuilding the D&RGW.  Perhaps Gould anticipated that general economic growth would create so much traffic that he could bootstrap the reconstruction of the D&RGW.  If he thought that, then he was not too astute about geography, mining, agriculture, or manufacturing, as there was little prospect of that growth occurring due to the lack of water in the West.  E.H. Harriman and J.J. Hill were that astute, and refrained from building useless extensions into deserts or from parallelling already-built railroads that had taken up the best location.  Where they clashed they soon cooperated.

It's hard for us to day, with coal moving from Wyoming to Georgia, containers from Los Angeles to Newark, and lumber from British Columbia to Florida, to contemplate the world as it was in 1900, when the average haul for lumber and coal was perhaps one hundred miles.  Transcon strategy then was to seize the productive local territory first, attract the shippers to trackside and encourage them to invest in trackside structures and facilities for handling the business, and build up the local business carefully and prudently.  At points of articulation, the idea was that it mattered not who or how many was the connections, only that if the preponderance of the traffic originated or had to terminate only on your railroad, then you controlled the connection.  The UP was the classic example at Council Bluffs of this strategy. 

RWM

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Posted by Railway Man on Monday, June 23, 2008 9:15 PM

 chad thomas wrote:
I recall reading where he was responsible for introduceing spectoral analasys of diesel engine oil to determine when major componets were near failure (due to metalic residues in the lube oil).

I've read those accounts too, Chad, along with some others.  The problem is context.  If, for example, we had an article from a respected railway mechanical journal such as Modern Shop entitled "Advances in Diesel-Electric Maintenance through Spectrographic Analysis of Lubricating Oil," and in that article it said something like "The D&RGW, under the leadership of A.E. Perlman, was the first to investigate and employ these methods, which were then emulated by all other railroads," then we'd really be on to something.  But instead, the source is a history of the D&RGW, a history whose preparation was financed by the D&RGW, and with a thesis statement that could be described as "This is the greatest railway EVER.  Trust me."  The source and the context is not sufficient for a reader to judge if the fact has meaning.

I will applaud and honor the person who shoulders the herculean task of plowing through all the railway professional journals published during Perlman's era at the D&RGW and reports back whether he caught the attention of his peers, or made a difference at the D&RGW that proved his mettle, or did things that advanced the industry.  And I'll be thrilled, because I'd like to know the answer, too.  I have been through every issue of Railway Age from 1890-1970, page-by-page, item-by-item, and I did read everything I could find on D&RGW, but that's just one journal, and one because of its breadth of scope is unlikely to be definitive on mechanical engineering or track and structures engineering.  I don't recall anything about Perlman that was astonishing but I wasn't looking for it either.  Someday when I retire from the railroad job I will repeat my steps and look.  I do recall that the D&RGW got more press than it would if on a per-capita revenue or mileage basis, which is in itself a good sign that maybe its management was indeed better than your average bear.  Or, perhaps the editors of Railway Age just liked the scenery!

RWM

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Posted by Paul_D_North_Jr on Monday, June 23, 2008 9:59 PM

I believe that while Perlman was in a high-up Engineering or Operating Dept. position with the D&RGW, he pioneered - or at least provided a great case study in - the use of off-track construction equipment.  That would include such types as bulldozers, dump trucks, and the like, instead of work-train steam shovels, cranes with clamshell buckets, and gondolas or dump cars, etc.  My recollection is this occurred in restoring a key line back to service in an incredibly short time after a flood (or similar event) - far quicker and with less work-train disruption to resuming operations than would otherwise have been expected.

There have been at least 1 - and maybe 2 - articles on Perlman in Trains since about 1970 - 1 of them within the last 5 years or so, that would confirm my recollection.  I'll try to provide a citation in the next day or two.

 - Paul North.

 Murphy Siding wrote:
     One last question, before this thread slips off into oblivion.  Alfred E. Perlman played a central role in PennCentral.  Most accounts note that he was hired by the NYC based on what he did for the Rio Grande.  They never really go into detail what he actually did for DRGW.  What was his role, that he received such high marks for?

"This Fascinating Railroad Business" (title of 1943 book by Robert Selph Henry of the AAR)
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Posted by chad thomas on Monday, June 23, 2008 10:29 PM
 Railway Man wrote:

 chad thomas wrote:
I recall reading where he was responsible for introduceing spectoral analasys of diesel engine oil to determine when major componets were near failure (due to metalic residues in the lube oil).

I've read those accounts too, Chad, along with some others.  The problem is context.  If, for example, we had an article from a respected railway mechanical journal such as Modern Shop entitled "Advances in Diesel-Electric Maintenance through Spectrographic Analysis of Lubricating Oil," and in that article it said something like "The D&RGW, under the leadership of A.E. Perlman, was the first to investigate and employ these methods, which were then emulated by all other railroads," then we'd really be on to something.  But instead, the source is a history of the D&RGW, a history whose preparation was financed by the D&RGW, and with a thesis statement that could be described as "This is the greatest railway EVER.  Trust me."  The source and the context is not sufficient for a reader to judge if the fact has meaning.

I will applaud and honor the person who shoulders the herculean task of plowing through all the railway professional journals published during Perlman's era at the D&RGW and reports back whether he caught the attention of his peers, or made a difference at the D&RGW that proved his mettle, or did things that advanced the industry.  And I'll be thrilled, because I'd like to know the answer, too.  I have been through every issue of Railway Age from 1890-1970, page-by-page, item-by-item, and I did read everything I could find on D&RGW, but that's just one journal, and one because of its breadth of scope is unlikely to be definitive on mechanical engineering or track and structures engineering.  I don't recall anything about Perlman that was astonishing but I wasn't looking for it either.  Someday when I retire from the railroad job I will repeat my steps and look.  I do recall that the D&RGW got more press than it would if on a per-capita revenue or mileage basis, which is in itself a good sign that maybe its management was indeed better than your average bear.  Or, perhaps the editors of Railway Age just liked the scenery!

RWM

RWM, Thanks for your input. Thinking about it I got that from a WP / Al Perlman article by Rush Loveing Jr. a while back in Trains mag. I figured it was credible and took it on face value.

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Posted by MichaelSol on Monday, June 23, 2008 10:32 PM

 Murphy Siding wrote:
     One last question, before this thread slips off into oblivion.  Alfred E. Perlman played a central role in PennCentral.  Most accounts note that he was hired by the NYC based on what he did for the Rio Grande.  They never really go into detail what he actually did for DRGW.  What was his role, that he received such high marks for?

For a guy who started as a track laborer for the Northern Pacific Railroad, he went a long ways fast. In general, for those who believe the industry is always right, Perlman stands in marked contrast by nearly always proving it wrong. For those who take the trouble to use search engines, there is a great deal of information on line. For those who prefer to let others do their work for them, I am sure someone will oblige.

"Alfred E. Perlman Dies at 80; New York Central President." The New York Times. May 2, 1983.

An interesting appearance in a corporate movie:

http://www.archive.org/details/BigTrain1950

His biggest impact on the industry was perhaps not through his ill-fated role in the Penn Central debacle, and certainly not the D&RGW, but through the impact of his various vice presidents and assistants, generally equipped with the MBA degree he felt most important, spreading out through the industry as they jumped a sinking ship, generically known as "Perlman's Boys", bringing modern financial analytical tools to the industry.  

 

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Posted by Paul_D_North_Jr on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 8:37 AM

To briefly correct & supplement my previous post:

Perlman's innovative work in restoring washed-out rail lines was on the CB&Q in the 1930's, not the D&RGW.

Perlman is also - and perhaps better - known for restoring the bankrupt Denver & Rio Grande to profitability, as Executive Vice President under Judge Wilson McCarthy.

He earned a B.S. in Civil Engineering from MIT in 1923, and a Masters in Railway Transportation from Harvard Business School in 1931 - neither one a shabby institution.

- Paul North.

"This Fascinating Railroad Business" (title of 1943 book by Robert Selph Henry of the AAR)
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Posted by jeaton on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 9:13 AM
 Railway Man wrote:

In simplest terms, Amtrak M&E was an initiative in which Amtrak would market intermodal services in direct competition with Class I intermodal services, and achieve pricing power by continuing to use Amtrak's passenger train slots which by law are costed to Amtrak at a tiny fraction of their true value.  Amtrak M&E even proposed to expand Amtrak service to a large swath of new lanes, service which consisted of an intermodal train with a token Amtrak rider coach on the rear, anticipating that it could purchase these slots again at a fraction of true market value because in its eyes it was creating a new public good.

The reaction from the Class Is to this initiative varied from "You've got to be kidding" to "OK, I see now that you're serious but preternaturally naiive -- and the answer is no."

Romantically, it sure looked like a way to revisit the passenger glory days of yore.  From a practical viewpoint, it was if a railroad's passenger, mail & express business suddenly seceded from the railroad, set up its own business with its own books, bank accounts, and profit extraction, and was shocked when the freight railroad paid a visit and asked it to start paying rent on its stations, tracks, and shops. 

RWM

Even if the Class I's had responded "Oh sure, whatever", I still don't think it would have turned the kind of bucks to be a very viable business.

"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics

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Posted by MichaelSol on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 10:48 AM
 Railway Man wrote:

I've read those accounts too, Chad, along with some others.  The problem is context.  If, for example, we had an article from a respected railway mechanical journal such as Modern Shop entitled "Advances in Diesel-Electric Maintenance through Spectrographic Analysis of Lubricating Oil," and in that article it said something like "The D&RGW, under the leadership of A.E. Perlman, was the first to investigate and employ these methods, which were then emulated by all other railroads," then we'd really be on to something.  But instead, the source is a history of the D&RGW, a history whose preparation was financed by the D&RGW, and with a thesis statement that could be described as "This is the greatest railway EVER.  Trust me."  The source and the context is not sufficient for a reader to judge if the fact has meaning.

Unfortunately, most readers come unprepared for the task, even suspending any natural analytical skills in favor of believing and perpetuating mythologies. Indeed, many come looking for such mythologies, as if it fulfills some personal need to have them, and facts be d*****. A railfan forum is probably not the place to make the observation, but the symptoms certainly show up on a regular basis, with questions being posed that clearly presume the answer the questioner wants to hear, with predictable results if the questioner hears an answer that does not confirm his romantic self-interests and an almost embarassing adulation if he does.

And it's not that much better on the professional side. Historians with little economics background trying to make sense of an economic history; Economists with little understanding of the historically peculiar nature of the rail industry; Business writers with little historical or economic training attempting to manufacture a rational explanation for what they see.

D&RG is symptomatic. People want to anthropomorphize circumstance. It's a "plucky" little railroad, isn't it? "Persistant"! Well no, circumstances pretty much defined everything that happened. Alfred Perlman has been identified in some publications as the man that "brought the D&RG" out of bankruptcy, as though that were a yeoman's task vindicating assessments of his brilliance. Actually, every single railroad that entered bankruptcy in the period 1935-1937 -- and there was a bunch -- also came out of bankruptcy 1945-1947. Perlman was Chief Engineer until 1947 and had little to do with any "turnaround" since he was general manager for the period after the railroad left bankruptcy. Too, the "turnaround" had little to do with anything that was not directly tied to WWII and post-War prosperity. But, one explanation fits the "narrative" and the other is pretty mundane.

While it is possible from time to time to identify an original builder as giving life to a genuine dream, even that often falls victim in the hands of railfans and historians alike to some innate desire to tell a good story, rather than the truth. Most likely because while one is easier to tell, the other requires some hard work.

 

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Posted by CopCarSS on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 12:17 PM

 MichaelSol wrote:
D&RG is symptomatic. People want to anthropomorphize circumstance. It's a "plucky" little railroad, isn't it? "Persistant"! Well no, circumstances pretty much defined everything that happened.

I think I'd be one of the first to anthropomorphize the railroad. No matter the set of circumstances, there's still human interaction with those circumstances. I think it's a natural reaction to impart human attributes on inanimate objects because of the human element involved with those objects and the circumstances at any given moment.

While the D&RG might have been "plucky" or "persistant," I think the same can be said to any even higher degree for the RGS. There's a railroad that had no business surviving as long as it did. Circumstances certainly changed quite a bit for that railroad during it's lifetime, but the determination of the individuals associated with it kept it alive. It's just natural for me to sum up their efforts as a whole by anthropomorphizing the corporate entity that was common to them all -- so I say that the RGS was a plucky little railroad!

-Chris
West Chicago, IL
Christopher May Fine Art Photography

"In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration." ~Ansel Adams

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Posted by selector on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 1:05 PM
 MichaelSol wrote:

...Unfortunately, most readers come unprepared for the task, even suspending any natural analytical skills in favor of believing and perpetuating mythologies. Indeed, many come looking for such mythologies, as if it fulfills some personal need to have them, and facts be d*****. A railfan forum is probably not the place to make the observation, but the symptoms certainly show up on a regular basis, with questions being posed that clearly presume the answer the questioner wants to hear, with predictable results if the questioner hears an answer that does not confirm his romantic self-interests and an almost embarassing adulation if he does.

...

Michael, I think by now we get that you feel you have been hard done by of late.  Could we give it a rest already and just stick to the discussion without so much editorializing?  And, I am not making this observation in a vacuum; the off-line grumbling is getting harder to ignore.

-Crandell

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