Sometimes you have to fail to learn.
There's an excellent argument that Penn Central is greatly responsible for what we have now and all the success the industry has enjoyed in recent years. Passenger rail that is funded by taxpayers, Staggers Act and other deregulation of the industry, the eventual death of the micromanaging ICC 20 years later in part due to this disaster, increased positive government involvement in railroading instead of just being viewed as an industry to tax to death (Like all these clearance improvement projects in the East, governments purchasing rail lines to preserve service, etc.), improved working relationships with unions, etc. And they accomplished some good things during all that turmoil as well.
Consolidation at its core was a good idea for instance and likely necessary for the long-term survival of Northeastern railroading (But government and unions tied their hands). And I believe many of the improvement projects the Central had been doing since the 50's were continued as best as finances allowed, such as increased use of computerization and increased acceptance of the piggyback concept. I suspect the list of posititve steps made during the time is a long one and each one is all the more impressive when you realize all the adversity that was going on at the same time. And it's commonly viewed that the primary causes of their failures were out of their hands (Government mandated passenger service that was racking up millions in losses, roadblocks to abandoning their many redundant lines, issues with unions and such that prevented them from trimming their workforce, and Hurricane Agnes solidfying their state as hopeless at a time when there appeared to be a glimmer of hope just as progress started to be made when you read the press at the time).
Plus, I imagine a decent number of CSX and NS workers that have been on the job for several decades got their start on Penn Central in the Northeast. Reminding employees of their past, both the good times and the bad times, isn't a bad idea and I imagine is a major reason for a program like this to increase employee morale, make workers feel proud of all their accomplishments over the years in helping the industry get to this point, etc. And outside of the newspapers, I suspect life went on for most Penn Central workers that went about doing their jobs as well as possible.
Penn Central didn't have a monopoly on trouble, although the size of their failure was far greater than the troubles many of these other lines represented had faced before disappearing (Sometimes for decades, like the Central Railroad of New Jersey). So I'd like to think they just couldn't secure permission to use the name or torpedoed it when they found out they'd have to secure permission and didn't own the name. And from a railfan perspective (Although I imagine there is a lot of nostalgia for that era these days thanks to all the motive power variety, manned interlocking towers being common, lots of steam era infrastructure still around, and many other reasons), at least we're not losing much due to their utilitarian paintscheme.
Good or bad, Penn Central is an important time in their heritage and worth remembering.
