Pan Am Railways article in Trains magazine

I am not saying that the management of this company over the years were "saints", they certainally were not but in all
fairness, they would not have made it if they had continued to operate with 4 and 5 person crews. It was not possible and
indeed in the entire industry trains today run with mostly two person crews. They almost always run just as well with two
person crews as they did with four and five people in the past and a caboose on the rear end too.
The Florida East Coast started the ball rolling with extended crew districts, reduced crews and no more caboose on the rear
end. This brought on a very bitter strike but in the end the other railroads followed suit one by one.
The moral of the story is that the railroads operate just as well without the caboose, with an engineer and conductor as
compared with two or three more crew members and with extended districts.
Some of the unions did not help the troops on this railroad with decisions made in years past either, I will not go into detail
this time over this issue.
As for Trains Magazine, I can agree that many, many years past it was better and more railfan friendly but today it is
probably better than it was not too many years ago. I still think this article was informative and well written.
Noel Weaver

I have to agree with those who look at the article as a whitewash. While the content it presents appears technically accurate, it excludes any mention of the observation by many that the railroad has been run like an unsuccessful real estate development operation that runs trains only because it is legally obligated to do so.

PBM

To make sure he keeps on getting invitations to different operations, Fred Frailey can't realistically be expected to take a Lincoln Steffens approach when he writes. However, there is much unwritten suggestion about GTI/GRS/PAR's problems.
Management-labor conflict gets at least some coverage. Good employee moral isn't a quantifiable, and maybe even is seen as evidence that mid-level management isn't tough enough (more about the end-of-days PRR mindset later). Have -- or even provoke -- a couple of strikes and, short term, expenses will drop. What goes unwritten, however, is the story of management-customer conflict. Because of a whole series of service deteriorations -- labor, power, and ROW-related -- those customers who could did go elsewhere, either by different routing in a few cases or by different modes. If you save on the expense side of the ledger, but that causes a reduction in income, how have you profited? Rebuilding trust that has been burned -- trust from customers, the income side, and trust from workers, the expense side -- is a difficult and time-consuming process. PAS is the overture to that process.
Fink the Elder is a "colorful" character and the source copy for Frailey. Much is made of Fink's role as a PRR/PC superintendent. If the old-school mindset that still seems to be the Elder's approach, was so successful, why did PRR become PC and why did PC become ConRail? (No, it wasn't because of the New Haven, but the Red v. Green turf wars over whether the Pennsy or the Central would "win.") In the article, the former super seems not to be given to reflection. That's too bad. He might reflect on how a former PRR subsidiary, the N&W, successfully combined with the SOU -- after some problems -- to produce the life preserver that is keeping whatever remains of his reputation afloat.
P.S. How much face-time does Frailey seem to have gotten with Timothy Mellon?

Noel Weaver wrote:Good article written by somebody who knows his subject. It sheds a good light on the railroad in my opinion. I enjoyed reading it.
Noel Weaver

It was a nice article, and a good review of Guilford/PAR history, and it highlighted the good things they've been doing. But when I read a little closer, I feel like so much was glossed over. I wasn't looking for a muckraking exposé, but some mention of the whole Boston-Maine Airways fiasco would have been proper. The more I read the article, I got the impression that this deal with NS was not so much a shrewd business decision, but NS working with the "less of two evils" to gain access to the port of Boston.

jaymac wrote:To make sure he keeps on getting invitations to different operations, Fred Frailey can't realistically be expected to take a Lincoln Steffens approach when he writes.

Agreed, and I like Fred Frailey's writing. I felt there was some "whitewash" to the story, but you also have to wonder what the editors in Waukesha took out before the article hit print. Remember, you're not reading what the author wants you to see, you're reading what the editor put together.

Anyone remember the last article, "Guilford: New England's reticent regional" in the October 1998 Trains? There were no surprises in that article, either. Full of Fink's "Fine, fine, everything's fine." Written by someone I never heard of (it wasn't Hartley or Nelligan).

-otto-
-otto-

Otto, Noel, Jaymac & PBM - (Nice creative code-name by the way PBM....very fitting considering the subject at hand....)

You all hit the nail on the head and did better job than me of articulating what I found wrong with the article and why I disagreed with others in this forum post.

I was not expecting a slam-job either, but I was not expecting a complete washing of key facts about some of the games played between 1990 and 2008 and who really paid for what. I have the 1998 article too, and that had similar holes as you mentioned.

Pro Rail

It's entirely possible that Mr. Fink and/or Mr. Mellon and/or their lawyers said, "These are the topics that are off-limits..." and rattled off a list of things that they weren't going to discuss and that they didn't want printed. Considering that they once sued a man for an op-ed piece, it's not a stretch of the imagination to think that they might say to Frailey and/or the magazine, "Sure, you can do a story, but these are the ground rules and you had better follow them."

It's kind of amazing that PAR allowed the interviews at all.

In all sorts of ways, NS made PAR an offer it couldn't refuse. If NS should happen to tell PAR to have at least one of its kingpins make nice for the trade/fan press, it's one more way of NS saying to potential customers that PAS is not PAR and that PAS will provide service improvements that PAR couldn't/wouldn't.

MEC407 wrote:It's kind of amazing that PAR allowed the interviews at all.

Why not? They allowed the interview and article to appear on their terms. And Mellon's photo was kept out of it. No surprises, just more "business as usual" over there. The last paragraph hit home, where Frailey summarized that the railroad's "four stockholders" were happy with recent progress, so why rock the boat? I thought to myself, "Four?!" Then I rattled off, Mellon, Fink, Fink,Jr...

...and speaking as a writer for Trains, let me tell you, interviews are NOT easy to get! I was trying to arrange an interview with a supplier in England for a new rail technology testing at AAR Pueblo... in other words, free publicity! The fellow on the other end of the line quizzed me for a half-hour about who I was, and then quizzed me about Trains magazine. "Never heard of it." Now granted, they're across the pond and all, but I figure an industry-enthusiast magazine with 150,000 circulation pulls some weight. Obviously not. I understand protecting your product from industrial espionage, but there's only so many credentials I can produce!

So Trains publishes another in a long line of "safe" industry profiles with this recent feature on Pan Am Railways. Long gone are the days of John Kneiling and others openly criticizing the industry (for better or for worse). No one was going to air dirty laundry in this one.

Mr. Nelligan probably came as close to "exposing" Guilford back in 1987 when he reported on the "lease" of B&M and MEC to Springfield Terminal.

MEC407 wrote:It's entirely possible that Mr. Fink and/or Mr. Mellon and/or their lawyers said, "These are the topics that are off-limits..." and rattled off a list of things that they weren't going to discuss and that they didn't want printed. Considering that they once sued a man for an op-ed piece, it's not a stretch of the imagination to think that they might say to Frailey and/or the magazine, "Sure, you can do a story, but these are the ground rules and you had better follow them."

It's kind of amazing that PAR allowed the interviews at all.

Here's the link about the writer who was sued. The writer won, BTW.
http://www.gannett.com/go/newswatch/200 ... 1110-5.htm

Otto Vondrak wrote:

MEC407 wrote:It's kind of amazing that PAR allowed the interviews at all.

Why not? They allowed the interview and article to appear on their terms. And Mellon's photo was kept out of it. No surprises, just more "business as usual" over there. The last paragraph hit home, where Frailey summarized that the railroad's "four stockholders" were happy with recent progress, so why rock the boat? I thought to myself, "Four?!" Then I rattled off, Mellon, Fink, Fink,Jr...

My reaction, too, when I read that-- "only FOUR stockholders?" Even Providence & Worcester has more shareholders than that (although granted P&W is actually a publicly-traded company w a listing on the NY Stock Exchange under ticker PWX). Guess the fourth must be Mellon's son or daughter.

That's what made me wonder, too, if at least part of the back story to the PAS venture wasn't NS buying some insurance against the possibility of one of the four cashing out by selling (or having their estate sell) an interest to some other party (be it another railroad or a private equity player).

Overall, though, as someone who was only familiar with the broad background of the Guilford/PanAm story, I thought it was a pretty good article. As was said earlier in this thread, I don't expect a Lincoln Steffens-esque expose from Trains.

According to the article the son Fink is not the same person that the father Fink is.
This is the same situation that existed on the New Haven Railroad way back in the early 50's. The father Dumaine was a
hatchet man, cut throat and other unpleasant names. The son (known as Bucky) was much more mellow but a very good
railroader and he undid some of the damage that was done by his father. Does anybody on here remember this?
Noel Weaver

The fourth partner is a guy named Kelso.

Richard S. Kelso is an investment banker with Wachovia. Addresses listed as Alexandria VA and Portsmouth NH.

PBM

Noel Weaver wrote:According to the article the son Fink is not the same person that the father Fink is.
This is the same situation that existed on the New Haven Railroad way back in the early 50's. The father Dumaine was a
hatchet man, cut throat and other unpleasant names. The son (known as Bucky) was much more mellow but a very good
railroader and he undid some of the damage that was done by his father. Does anybody on here remember this?
Noel Weaver

Didn't the younger Dumaine eventually go on to run the Bangor & Aroostook after he was ousted from the New Haven by Pat McGinnis?