The rush to rip up track, and why keep the track they did...

Stanley "Demolition Crane" and Richard Hasselman should have been tried as enemies of the state. After spending 7 billion 200 million GAO documented dollars on rebuilding Conrail, they destroyed a number of viable lines that we could use today. The Erie Line from Leavittsburg, Ohio to Cleveland was an example as was the double track former P Company main line from Hilliard, Ohio to Union City, Indiana. Both tracks of that line had been completely rebuilt betwee 1976 and 1978. The single tracking of the B Line between Berea, Ohio and Ridgeway didn't make any sense since the line was used for heavy traffic diverted from the Panhandle through Columbus. The destruction of the Erie was done so none of the Western carriers could access the east. The public interests were not served even though Conrail officials claimed to be acting on their behalf. All of the Conrail bandits involved in that liquidation retired very rich men, and LeVan continued the tradition when he hauled a boxcar full of loot away when Conrail was divided up between the CSX and NS, which is another story and another crime.

"The destruction of the Erie was done so none of the Western carriers could access the east." -this sums up the exact reason why CR tore up EL trackage as rapidly as they did. And if NY state hadn't invested in the Southern Tier Mainline in '82, that might just be a memory, too.

I think there's another factor not considered here, that of the original Con-Rail management's insularity...it was the "not-invented-here" mindset. CR's management was largely warmed-over Pennsy management, which didn't demonstrate much creativity or good sense in the PC era.

I really believe that they LOOKED for good reasons NOT to incorporate the EL into their system.

That sounds silly and I don't have facts, but I worked with old-timers who went through that cluster-muck. When they started telling their old stories, I, too, thought them uninformed and biased and simplistic...

...until I saw how the railroad did its business. It seemed almost to be management-by-whim; fix up a line or a yard today and abandon it tomorrow.

And I saw how CSX, which suffers from the same mindset, did ITS planning. To this day, the CSX suffers from Them-versus-us mentality; they treat their Conrail property as a competitor, not as a unit of their system. A lot of money and energy is being spent to wipe every vestige of Conrail from the system, everything from rules and signals to supervision and local agreements.

Not all of what they're doing makes sense, any sense.

Seeing the Chessie management act this way, it's not so far out of mind to imagine the Pennsy holdovers take the same sort of meat axe to the EL. Doubtless they had their justifications ready...at the time, they were doing business on the public dime. That does not mean that an alternative, route-preserving plan could have been as effective, or more so. For, while there were many dying industries along the EL that didn't justify continued service, there were others just springing up, as with the Honda plant in Marysville.

This last especially is telling...Honda built there to have access to rail service. But the only rail service they have now that the EL mainline is gone is over the dark-territory Scottslawn Secondary, on a convoluted route from Columbus to a tie-in with the CR Indy Line.

When did Honda build the plant?

Alot of ex-PC employees (such as Mr. Weaver) were in denial about the usefulness of ex-EL trackage, as posted in rail forums like this one. With its generous clearances, the former EL mainline would have been the pre-emininent intermodal route in the Northeast- if only the line had been give a chance...

Matt Langworthy wrote:When did Honda build the plant?

Ground was broken early in 1980. Of course the careful Japanese spent years researching the location beforehand; and to them the idea that a railroad could just disappear was incomprehensible.

Honda officials were no doubt aided in their delusion by the hucksterish Governor James Rhodes, who was the personification of siding-salesman as politician. Oily.

Aaah, the irony is that the importation of Japanese steel led to a decline in its US counterpart. The weakened economy really hurt EL during its bankruptcy, as the Mahoning Valley steel industry was a major component of their traffic.

"But the only rail service they have now that the EL mainline is gone is over the dark-territory Scottslawn Secondary, on a convoluted route from Columbus to a tie-in with the CR Indy Line"

The Honda plant was and is located a good 20 miles to the southwest of Marion at the crossing of the former NYC Columbus-Toledo main and the former Erie Dayton branch (railroad location "Pottersburg"). I would think the connection to the EL main via Marion was no more convoluted than the CR connection through Ridgeway.

By the time the ground was broken on the plant, the EL main in Ohio was long gone as a through route in any case.

Lets be honest here, folks - thirty years ago, seven main lines handled traffic from Chicago to the east coast (five if you exclude the PRR via Columbus and the Michigan Centrol via Detroit and Canada as a separate main). Today, two handle the existing traffic. Abandonment was inevitable, and delaying it almost brought the entire US rail network in the Northeast into nationalization. [/quote]

I never saw the property before 1998...but I was told by the old-timers that the spur going into Honda's industrial yard (it's at a 90-degree angle and is connected to the Scottslawn by a Y ) was the old EL mainline and that it once was a diamond.

It was the same old-timers that pointed out the irony of how the Honda people looked for years to find a location next to a railroad in the process of disappearing.

I suppose I could double-check this; but you guys are as good a source as any.

It's true that the Dayton Branch was built the main line - they originally planned to connect with the Ohio and Mississippi (which became the B&O Cincinnati-St. Louis main) at Cincinnati to form a broad-gauge route to St. Louis. Things never panned out, and the line from Marion to Chicago built later on became the Erie main for western traffic by the early 20th century.

I'm sure there was a diamond at Pottersburg - the EL ran trains from Marion to Dayton right up to Conrail Day, I believe. Methinks the EL actually had traffic rights into Cincinnati over the B&O, but seldom if ever used them.

catfoodflambe wrote:Lets be honest here, folks - thirty years ago, seven main lines handled traffic from Chicago to the east coast (five if you exclude the PRR via Columbus and the Michigan Centrol via Detroit and Canada as a separate main). Today, two handle the existing traffic. Abandonment was inevitable, and delaying it almost brought the entire US rail network in the Northeast into nationalization.

Rationalization was inevitable but I disagree with the systmetatic destruction of one line as the solution for the problem. Indeed, EL's traffic woes were minor compared to the colossal issues facing its much larger rival, PC. Indeed, the declining industrial base that weakened EL was hurting PC just as much, if not more. If EL had been the only bankrupt carrier in the East, I could see your point. However, it was not. And, as Bill Burt and I have each said, EL was far better suited for the coming of double stacks than either the PRR or NYC routes, both of which required expensive clearance projects to make them suitable for that traffic.

And are two lines really sufficient for all of the New York to Chicago traffic? I think not. A quick glance at the CSX thread indicates a major problem with delays due to heavy traffic on the Water Level Route. At the same time, NS is implementing a major clearance project with the Pokey to allow for more East Coast to Chicago traffic. An intact EL would have solved either problem on the cheap- although I'm surprised NS doesn't make more use of a routing involving the former NKP main and the remnants of EL. At any rate, EL's mainline was really more of a victim of severe myopia and corporate bias than of true redundancy.

(A little late but I just got here.)

If the EL was not a viable route, why did UPS use the EL right to the last day? It should be noted that 30 years later, UPS isn't happy with ANY of their options into the northeast.
How much money did CR spend to improve the clearances on the River Line? And isn't it ironic that they used the "unviable" EL route to handle all the stack trains while they were spending 10s of millions of dollars to duplicate what they already had?
I think everyone knows by now what Conrail did to prevent the sale of the Meadville Line. If Conrail wasn't trying to do nothing but eliminate competition, why did they need a court order to sell a line that was of no use? Why did Conrail change the rules when the area Rail Authority came up with the money (CR demanding they be told who was financing the deal)?
New York State spent a lot of money to keep Conrail from ripping up the Southern Tier. Conrail got a lot of use out of a useless route during the late 80s. Conrail was ticked off when the NYS&W started running the Sea-Land trains (I believe CR tried to/did ban the ALCOs) and they were ticked off again when NS/DH/NYSW teamed up on the CSX intermodals. Almost a "how dare they find a way around us" mentality. I always found it interesting how the western roads were competitors but would cooperate when they needed to, but Conrail couldn't seem to get along with anyone who they could justify calling a competitor (I'm sure the NS/DH/NYSW was really going to kill Big Blue).

hartlandguy wrote:(A little late but I just got here.)

If the EL was not a viable route, why did UPS use the EL right to the last day? It should be noted that 30 years later, UPS isn't happy with ANY of their options into the northeast.
How much money did CR spend to improve the clearances on the River Line? And isn't it ironic that they used the "unviable" EL route to handle all the stack trains while they were spending 10s of millions of dollars to duplicate what they already had?
I think everyone knows by now what Conrail did to prevent the sale of the Meadville Line. If Conrail wasn't trying to do nothing but eliminate competition, why did they need a court order to sell a line that was of no use? Why did Conrail change the rules when the area Rail Authority came up with the money (CR demanding they be told who was financing the deal)?
New York State spent a lot of money to keep Conrail from ripping up the Southern Tier. Conrail got a lot of use out of a useless route during the late 80s. Conrail was ticked off when the NYS&W started running the Sea-Land trains (I believe CR tried to/did ban the ALCOs) and they were ticked off again when NS/DH/NYSW teamed up on the CSX intermodals. Almost a "how dare they find a way around us" mentality. I always found it interesting how the western roads were competitors but would cooperate when they needed to, but Conrail couldn't seem to get along with anyone who they could justify calling a competitor (I'm sure the NS/DH/NYSW was really going to kill Big Blue).

yeah..thats all might be true, but railroads are still buisnesses..and all buisnesses can and SHOULD do whatever is legally in their power to protect their revenue. It could be argued that all these things Conrail did that were considered "bad" by some, could also be considered just good business practices! If I worked for Conrail at the time, I would be glad they took a tough stance on competition..
fighting off the competition, no matter how small = more money Conrail makes = less layoffs = I keep my job.

I work for Kodak right now..im not going to complain when Kodak gets "mean" and goes after patent infringements!
my job is at stake..

Corporations dont have to be "nice" to the competition..
actually, they shouldnt be, if money is at stake.

Scot

Sure it may be easy to bash Conrail now for ripping up the Erie, but on Conrail's last day they were making due with TWO tracks to Chicago. On Conrail's first day, they had FOUR, and if you add the EL, that's 5 1/2 or six, depending on how you look at it. In the late 70's Conrail couldn't even be sure they would have enough business for the NYC, let alone the others. Remember, that people like Crane were hired to save CONRAIL, not preserve routes for their competition to turn around and beat them with, or make us railfans happy. Nobody is any sadder than me that the Erie is gone, that the once mighty Pennsy Chicago line is a plodding single track run by a short line, that the Panhandle is gone, the GR&I, The FW&J, the Eel River, I wish we had them ALL back, but then the reality of the situation sets in. I was told that if NS had been able to buy Conrail in 87, they were going to put the NKP and the west end of the Pennsy on the sale block. That ought to say something that about the number of line to Chicago needed in years past. Even Today, the NKP is not running the number of trains it was before the merger. There is STILL excess capacity even with no EL and very little help from the Pennsy.

OK, number 1, when you have duplicate ROWs like the CNJ-LV from Allentown to Lehighton (although on opposite sides of the Lehigh River) it makes sense to eliminate one of those lines. That's one reason to take up rails. Number 2, scrap or salvage, money can be made or saved by selling the rails for scrap, or if the rails are still in good enough condition, using them for relay on other lines. Number 3, land values, once again money can be made by selling the ROW to interested parties. I have some personal observations on these points. My home town of Nazareth,PA once had 2 rail lines serving it, the DL&W-EL Bangor and Portland branch and the L&NE-CNJ-LV Martins Creek branch. After CR took over the B&P saw less and less traffic because the line from Stockertown through Nazareth and on to Bath was served by both branches. The Hercules Cement mill in Stockertown, Essroc and Lone Star in Nazareth, and Keystone Cement in Bath could be serviced by the former L&NE line. Around 1979-1980 the B&P between Stockertown, south of Rt.191 to Friedenstal Ave on Nazareth's east side was removed. That land and some farm property was sold to Hercules so they could expand their quarry. By 1990 all of the B&P would be removed in Nazareth and west to Bath, plus other parts from Stockertown-Belfast area to the junction with the main portion of the Martins Creek branch north of Martins Creek. I agree with Matt that CR wanted to eliminate and remove any lines that could be used by the competition. The cutoff being one in particular. What ticks me off is CR's blatent disreguard of the law. The powers that be (Judges) told them no and they did it anyway. Did they get fined for that? I believe one of the reasons they weren't supposed to remove that trackage was in case of a national emergency (war), that the Tobyhanna Army Depot could be accessed quickly to move equipment and supplies to the NY harbor areas. As far as routes to New England, EL could use (and did) their connections at Binghamton with the D&H to forward traffic to the B&M at Mechanicsville, NY.

Some of you seem to lose sight of the FACT that parts of the former Erie-
Lackawanna, Lehigh Valley, Reading, Penn Central etc were NEVER a part
of Conrail in the first place. The USRA made the decisions before day one
of the Conrail takeover as to just would and would not be part of Conrail.
On day one of Conrail, the lines that were not designated to be a part of
Conrail remained with the estates of the former railroads and unless
local authorities made a deal of some sort for their continued operation
for local customers, they went from a main line to an abandoned property
in only one day.
I have stated this before but I will again, in 1976 there was simply too
much physical plant in the Conrail territory for the amount of available
freight business at that time. None of the lines could compare with the
physical plant that existed on the former New York Central main line
across New York State in the 1970's. None of the other lines that were
not needed had big sources of traffic that were not protected by some
sort of a route.
Notwithstanding the present situation with CSX, Conrail handled the traffic
that once ran on the former PRR and EL over the Water Level Route with
little or no difficulty and still found time and track capacity for Amtrak
trains too. Any track capacity problems on the Water Level Route today
are likely caused by the sloppy operation of this fine route by CSX.
Noel Weaver