ThePointyHairedBoss wrote:Now, I've heard this term alot, and know what it is. Crumbling ties, rusted rails, weeds growing uncontrolled. But I have a question: How bad was it on Penn Central? Does anyone have any pictures of a line during the Penn Central Era and the same line today? I'm doing a paper on the Deregulation of railroads, and this kind of photo would help immensely.
It was pretty bad, there were important main lines with long stretches of
10 MPH operation and many yards were restricted to 5 MPH sometimes in
the entire yard. The deferred maintenance was worse on the PRR side
than on the NYC and NH side because the management of the PRR
praticed deferred maintenance for some time before the unfortunate
merger.
Many branch lines were 8 or 10 MPH for their entire length and the cost
of operations skyrocketed as a result of slow train operation, recrews,
power shortages because it took so long to get over the road and frequent
derailments and other problems resulting from poor or no maintenance.
It certainally was no picnic working under these conditions although they
did put a lot of money in our pockets.
Noel Weaver