In the early 1940's railroad managers were moving away from passenger service to focus on freight. Since 1930 Americans had been leaving trains to drive their cars. Traditional wisdom was that once World War II was over automobile ownership would surge leaving empty passenger trains.
Rpbert R. Young was a financier who had invested in railroads. He thought about the problem and he came up with a simple analysis anyone could understand to show the wrong headedness of railroad managers. If a person takes the train and has a good experience that person can come back again and again and again to ride the railroad. A load of coal, however, can only take one one way trip and the railroad will never see it again. Clearly passenger service is the way to go.
In 1942 Young became influential in a number of railroads including the Chesapeake and Ohio where he became Chairman of the Board of Directors. He proposed new trains lighter and faster than the old ones to revive passenger service. But he didn't stop there. In 1945 the Pullman Company had been found to be a monopoly and had to divest itself of its service section. Young wanted to organize the new corporation to operate sleeping cars. He started a publicity campaign and pointed out the current designs were decades old. He proposed special library cars and motion picture cars. And he published a famous advertisement: A box car with the side door open and a pig standing it. The caption said "A pig can go from the east coast to the west coast without changing trains but you can't." Railroad executives were not impressed. Neither was the ICC. Young did not get to operate sleeping car service. He then turned to the New York Central and began a fight to control it. Finally, after a public proxy fight, he gained control in 1950 and became Chairman of the Board. The old guard, led by Chairman Harold Vanderbilt, stepped down. The New York Central had a lot of passenger trains; this seemed to the the perfect place to show how good modern passenger service could revive the railroad. However, he knew he had a problem. He didn't really know very much about operating railroads. He brought in Alfred Perlman as Presdient. By all accounts Perlman did a brilliant job. He completely agreed with the traditonal idea that passenger service was bleeding the railroads and ignored it but he did everything he could to make freight possible. Ultimately he could not compete with the New York Thruway and the St. Lawrence Seaway so he proposed a merger with the Pennsylvania. That is another story. In January 1958 Robert R. Young took his own life.
Today we may have begun to realize Young's vision with Amtrak's Acela. Still, his vision was flawed. Private railroads had been slowly bleeding capital for a long, long time and the bleeding had to be stopped if there was to be any hope of them succeeding. Alfred Perlman realized that. He tried to stop the bleeding but in the end he failed.
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