Naming Metro-North: Were there any alternative names?

How about Penn Central?

There was a news article many years ago in the New York Times about possible names which you could probably find in a news archive or the Times index. Maybe about 1982.

Peter Stangl or someone didn't like Metro-North or names of that ilk, he wanted a name that sounded more traditional. The name he suggested was Grand Central & Northern. Everyone liked it except it didn't indicate the railroad would serve Connecticut too. So they went with Metro-North.

That would seem to violate the same rule -- they substituted Metro for Grand Central but kept North (Northern) -- but I guess 'North' was ambiguous enough they could claim, 'Yeah that means Connecticut, too.'

I think the problem with Metro-Rail was that it wasn't territory-specific.

.

Tommy Meehan wrote:Peter Stangl or someone didn't like Metro-North or names of that ilk, he wanted a name that sounded more traditional. The name he suggested was Grand Central & Northern. Everyone liked it except it didn't indicate the railroad would serve Connecticut too. So they went with Metro-North.

Grand Central & Northern sounds more English than American, doesn't it?

Ridgefielder wrote:

Tommy Meehan wrote:Peter Stangl or someone didn't like Metro-North or names of that ilk, he wanted a name that sounded more traditional. The name he suggested was Grand Central & Northern. Everyone liked it except it didn't indicate the railroad would serve Connecticut too. So they went with Metro-North.

Grand Central & Northern sounds more English than American, doesn't it?

It does have a flair of Britishness to it, I suppose. It certainly doesn't sound very modern That being said, the name "Metro-North" doesn't sound very territory-specific either unless you knew where it was beforehand. So GC&N would have served the same purpose. Makes me wonder what the FL-9s would have looked like in a GC&N livery

It would be cool if, like CDOT's embrace of the New Haven RR corporate identity, MNRR used the NY Central, NJ Transit used Erie-Lackawanna (for the Hoboken Division) and Jersey Central (for the Newark Division), and SEPTA used a PRR/Reading scheme. That would make for some good-looking Northeast Railroading.

In Donald Nelsons words" why the hell would we honor the loosers in railroad business"
We took a bankrupt rag tag scrapheap and made a railroad out of it, so why would we honor the thiefs ??

To Dutch's displeasure, how about "The New York, Poughkeepsie, Wassaic, and New Haven"? mandatory railroad.net wink

Personally, I still think the dirty water bummelzueg should be the "Naugy" and the Danbury "The Berkshire".

How about the New york New haven line and Harlem/Hudson branches

^WIN

We took a bankrupt rag tag scrapheap and made a railroad out of it...

I wonder what type suburban service New York Central *** could've provided if New York State had provided them with close to one billion dollars a year in operating subsidy and capital investment.

Count your blessings Dutch!

*** - Even if they'd had to share it with the New Haven Railroad

.

Thirty years ago, it was pretty important to make it clear that the new services were not operated by the same bankrupt outfits that had operated them for a century prior in order to bring passengers back and create voter support for the services. In 1980, naming MNCR the "New York Central" would've been a bad idea on a number of fronts.

Thirty years later, nobody knows wtf NYC was, or NH, or PRR or CNJ. Most people know the gov't owns the railroad, too.

Today, you could re-brand the Hudson/Harlem to "New York Central" or "New York Central & Hudson River" and it would be cool.

I think the situation was a bit different than you describe it Tadman but we're getting pretty far off topic I suppose.

As I recall New York Central had a pretty good reputation with the riding public. And the service was considered pretty good. Same with the New Haven except...they were struggling with bankruptcy, but I think most people understood that.

It was Penn Central and, in my experience especially Conrail, that seemed to suffer a poor public image with the riding public. But again I think most people knew it was a range of factors that were affecting the commuter railroads. It wasn't so much managerial incompetence but more a lack of adequate funding for needed maintenance and upgrades.

It always seemed (and this is still true today) it was the people who didn't ride the trains that were the most strident critics. I think the regular riders had a fairly realistic notion of what the problems were. Even about Conrail, that they wished to concentrate on the freight business. I remember people always used to say that.

Tommy, as a youngun, the NH line (whether it was NH or PC) were poorly regarded. I can't remember when, but at some point, they were talking about discontinuing service to Rob Petrie's hometown of New Rochelle, as well as Pelham and Mt. Vernon. Nevertheless, whether it was the color of the M2's or CDOT taking on the trademark, the brand identity of the New Haven has stood up pretty well. Notwithstanding the Harlem and Hudson divisions, the NYC was a WOH entity. Outside of us railfans, most commuters today look at those two divisions as the blue and green lines. Pity.

Again we're getting way off topic here, but if you go back and look at Connecticut's decision to use the NH logo and paint scheme on locomotives (and that's all it's used on) it had to do with honoring the fact the NYNH&H had been a Connecticut corporation with its headquarters in New Haven. I think it was Penn Central that decided to call the former New Haven suburban passenger service "the New Haven Line."

But realistically I think the decision to use the McGinnis livery had even more to do with the fact you had some railfans in ConnDOT. When the agency was having some FL-9s rebuilt they thought it would be cool to paint them in the New Haven livery. They justified it as a way of honoring a Connecticut-based corporation that had a long history in that state. It wasn't really what I would call a decision to brand the service, not in any real marketing sense. They had to decide on some paint scheme, they couldn't run them in primer.

As long as Grand Central Terminal stands I believe the name New York Central won't be forgotten.

Btw the 'plan' to halt passenger service at New Rochelle originated with Pat McGinnis in 1956 as a way of protesting New York City taxes and the fact west of there the railroad was very expensive to operate. It was revived in 1965 when the NH trustees were concluding there was no way to achieve an income-based reorganization.

.

CDOT originaly did not want a diffenent scheme, it was late Joe Trifoni that convinced a then CDOT head honcho to have the 4 original rebuilt FL-9's painted in scheme that would honor the ex New Haven heritage.
publicly it was such a succes that CDOT went for full rights when Conrail was being sold/broken up.