Newspaper Article re: Pan Am Railways

Article in today's Morning Sentinel:

WATERVILLE -- For at least part of this year, one of the most storied names in commercial aviation won't be flying the skies. It'll be chugging on the ground.

Months after Pan American World Airways became defunct, its owner, Guilford Rail System, has started a project that puts Pan Am's evocative blue-and-white globe on hundreds of Guilford's box cars.

Read the rest of the article at:

http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/n ... 3218.shtml

a friend of mine saw 3 or 4 Pan American Cars on a train back on the 29th or 30th going West to Buffalo, NY.

Very interesting article, but I wonder why they bothered to write it! Almost sounds like the author reads the boards...

I still don't get why Guilford won't pay taxes. What makes them think they are so special. From what I hear, they make plenty of money, so what they owe should be a drop in the bucket.

This Pan Am thing smells funny to me...

I know Guilford still owes back taxes too Lowell for multiple properties in Lowell. It seems with everthing else about there operation they could care less.

Perhaps the Springfield Terminal has too high labor costs, so it will all be run by "Pan Am"? Pure conjecture on this end.

They

A friend of mine was a hogger on various freight railroads for many years. He ended up going to work for Amtrak, because despite the substantial pay cut, the schedule more than made up for it.

A lot of guys who are conductors or engineers on freight railroads end up losing their relationships with their wives, children, etc... that's how bad the schedules can be.

If you're single and have no committments, it's not so bad.

That is true... crummy work schedules... BUT they have always been bad from what I can see. It's the nature of the beast. Look at how many railroad workers there were "in the hayday" of railroading compared to now. Why did people put up with it all then, but no one will now?

I think if you look back at the golden age of railroading -- i.e. the time period before the late 1950s -- the schedules were still crazy, but perhaps not quite as crazy as today, and there were other factors that made those schedules a little bit easier to deal with. A lot of the railroaders back then lived relatively close to their home terminal and didn't have to spend four hours a day in a taxi cab getting to and from the terminal. The crews were bigger back then (usually four or five men per freight train) which probably made the work a bit less strenuous, and possibly a bit less time consuming. There were a lot of other railroad-related jobs back then that simply don't exist today -- station agent, crossing tender, telegraph operator, tower operator, public relations specialist (the B&M had a really good one back in the old days), etc.

Check out the book High Green & The Bark Peelers for a fascinating look at what the B&M was like during the golden age of railroading. It's amazing how many jobs mentioned in that book don't exist today. (And it's heartbreaking to see how much pride those guys had in their beloved B&M -- not to mention how much respect and reverence the general public had for the railroad.)

Labor back in the golden days was not short handed eather like it is today. Think of how many people were migrateing over to the U.S. in the late 1890's threw the early 1920's and 1930's people took what ever jobs they could get.

Not to nitpick but the "Golden Age" of railroading is generally considered to be circa 1900 although dates obviously vary. Railroading in general was well into its decline by the middle part of the last century and certainly so by the 1950's. As for the work being less strenuous back then Good Lord man I don't know how you figure that. You are talking about an era of hand fired steam locomotives and hand brakes. Deaths and maimings were commonplace. The simple lack of cell phone technology made time away from one's family far more disruptive to a home life. Regarding relevant literature, "Vanishing Markers" was another great work describing the Boston and Maine of yesteryear.

TPR37777 wrote:Not to nitpick but the "Golden Age" of railroading is generally considered to be circa 1900 although dates obviously vary.

You're probably right, although for those of us under the age of 30, the 1950s certainly seems like a hayday compared to what we're accustomed to these days.

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$$$$$$$$$$$ Its basically semi-skilled, hard yes, but semi-skilled work that pays pretty well.

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