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  • Pan Am Railways article in Trains magazine

  • Guilford Rail System changed its name to Pan Am Railways in 2006. Discussion relating to the current operations of the Boston & Maine, the Maine Central, and the Springfield Terminal railroads (as well as the Delaware & Hudson while it was under Guilford control until 1988). Official site can be found here: PANAMRAILWAYS.COM.
Guilford Rail System changed its name to Pan Am Railways in 2006. Discussion relating to the current operations of the Boston & Maine, the Maine Central, and the Springfield Terminal railroads (as well as the Delaware & Hudson while it was under Guilford control until 1988). Official site can be found here: PANAMRAILWAYS.COM.

Moderator: MEC407

 #753816  by jaymac
 
ferroequinarcheologist-
Are you sure the "Kelso" in question is truly not the one from That 70's Show because that would explain so much...
 #753822  by Noel Weaver
 
Ridgefielder wrote:
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?
Yes he did and he was well thought of there too.
Noel Weaver
 #753843  by Ridgefielder
 
ferroequinarchaeologist wrote:Richard S. Kelso is an investment banker with Wachovia. Addresses listed as Alexandria VA and Portsmouth NH.

PBM
Actually, it looks like he's a stockbroker or something of that kind, not an investment banker; he holds the securities licenses you'd need to sell securities to the general public & his employer is listed as Wells Fargo Advisors LLC, St. Louis, MO, which is the old A.G. Edwards. His form U-4 (everyone in the securities industry has to have one, lists all business activities, infractions, etc.) lists him as an "Outside director on a board of 4." (these reports are public, btw-- you can find them at http://www.finra.org)
 #755328  by Otto Vondrak
 
Otto Vondrak wrote:...and speaking as a writer for Trains, let me tell you, interviews are NOT easy to get!
I would like to clarify that I am not in the employ of Trains or Kalmbach Publishing, but I have written pieces for them. Some successful, some not. I was trying to relate my own experience that getting an interview and completing a feature is not an easy task. My views do not represent Trains or Kalmbach Publishing.
 #755343  by Otto Vondrak
 
After having an off-line conversation with a couple of friends, I decided to clarify some of my earlier statements.
Otto Vondrak wrote: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.
So I made it sound like the editors took out any inflammatory statements against the railroad. I don't think I really believe that. But I do not that editors will edit for content and style, and occasionally re-write a story if what the writer supplied is not what was required. Did that happen with Fred Frailey's story? Most likely not. Not when you're the former editor of Kiplinger's. I still wonder if some trimming of the story was done for space constraints, but I doubt we lost any juicy morsels.

I liked Fred's story. He told a good story. He made the history of the railroad approachable for anyone not from the area and not familiar with the Guilford/Pan Am legacy. But I guess I wanted to learn more about the uneasy labor issues that plagued the railroad. And I would have liked to hear more about the NS deal. And maybe approach the topic of Pan Am's reputation. I felt like we were just getting into the good stuff when the article came to a close.
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).
This comment was not directed at the editors so much as whomever wrote that 1998 article... Fink gave him an interview, and he wrote his story based on that experience. I think as railfans, we demonize Guilford/Pan Am, and we are always expecting professional writers to do the same. We're waiting for that bombshell article to come out that will confirm that all of our bellyaching was correct!
Otto Vondrak wrote:...and speaking as a writer for Trains, let me tell you, interviews are NOT easy to get!
Like I said before, being a writer ain't easy. Attempting to be a writer for Trains is even more difficult.
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.
Did I think the story could have gone a little more in depth in some areas? Sure. I have no idea what the editor-writer conference was like and what the goals of the project were. Was the story "safe?" It was what Frailey wrote based on the information he gathered. Was it "sanitized" by the editors? Highly unlikely. Though my "safe" comment comes from a bad experience at a lifestyle mag where editors told me, "Take that out, it makes our advertisers look bad. As for John Kneiling, he was a great intelligent critic of his time period. And there probably wont be anyone like him to follow. Yes, there are critics today, but Kneiling style was one of a kind, in the context of his time. So, yes, indeed, gone are those days.

Whitewash? I just wish the Pan Am story went on a couple more pages, and perhaps I need to find a better way to vent my frustrations.

Off to take up knitting,

-otto-
 #756079  by jbvb
 
There's the Guilford that makes it's appearance in this and previous Trains articles. Then there's the Guilford that ran a freight out of fuel on double track between Haverhill and Plaistow yesterday, and somehow managed to stick the Downeaster behind it for 1:40. No criticism of the writing or the facts, but it certainly didn't come as close to controversy as the article earlier this year on Hunter Harrison's impending departure from CN.
 #766098  by JCitron
 
I read the article too. It was light reading, and as Otto said, didn't quite make it into the details. I hate to say it, but Trains magazine articles seem to do this a lot in general. I think it has something to do with the new art staff and copy editors. Having worked in the graphics industry for a number of years, I can say that meeting deadlines and copy length requirements can make or break the content of a magazine. Also, many magazines have gone the "light" flashy way instead of in depth reading like many online articles and blogs are. There's just enough information to pique the interest, but no real details on anything.

I agree that as railfans we tend to give GTI/PAR/PAS a bad rap. As someone that worked for a small company for many years, I can say that there are a lot of good hard working people that try hard to do a good job, and being a small company means that many fewer people have to work harder. Sadly management thinks only of the barebones costs, and rarely thinks of people down in the trenches. As a "trench" worker, I constantly had to deal with broken things, lack of funds for upgrades, etc. This made my job very frustrating, and when something finally died, such as the database server, that was when things got done. This sounds oh so familar on how our friends from Waterford and Bilerica work.

John
 #769030  by ItaliDe
 
Well Apparently Pan Am is doing something right! Changing the name to Pan AM from Guilford was one of the smartest marketing moves in rail business in 100 years.. now to mention, on the Model Railroading side.. Atlas said the new Pan Am GP40's in HO scale were sold out faster than any other model they have put out to date and that the GP40-2W's are already 4 times back ordered...... hmmmmm,,,,....
 #769454  by KSmitty
 
I do have to give the them the credit for renaming. For sheer recognition sake is there a name more known than PAN AM? However, for the application, not so wise. Maybe for a small airline, but not for a railroad, although, originally the airline was part of the operation.

Personally the best part about the name change was the new paint scheme, I love that dark blue...

I ordered the PDF files of the old back issue Guilford articles. Very enjoyable reading. I dug through most of them (lots of articles on Cascade Tunnel and Penn Station too) and I found some of them to be more in depth than the most recent. None really "attacked" the sharpest criticisms were short half page commentary type articles, and these focused in on the slow leasing of the entire system to ST.

Now I have to ask, who is John Kneiling? And what was his writing like?
 #769538  by Noel Weaver
 
KSmitty wrote:Now I have to ask, who is John Kneiling? And what was his writing like?
John Kneiling was a writer for Trains some years ago. He wrote a lot of stuff about his ideas for the future and some of his
stuff was pretty far out. He was also pretty anti labor in his writings. Trains finally dumped him and I for one was glad
when they did it. It was a waste of ink and paper.
Noel Weaver
 #771769  by cpf354
 
ItaliDe wrote:Well Apparently Pan Am is doing something right! Changing the name to Pan AM from Guilford was one of the smartest marketing moves in rail business in 100 years...
Well, maybe yes, maybe no. I don't think they ever would have used the Pan Am brand for the railroad unless they were operating the airline as well. I think the initial reason for re-branding the railroad was that they rightly expected the airline to be the major component of their bussiness, and might have thought sharing the brand with the railroad would have a positive impact on it. However when the airline went under, the railroad was stuck with it, and since it would prove costly and embarrassing to abandon the brand (and example being the box car re-paints), they just sucked it up and went forward as a railroad named after an airline that they no longer operated.
 #771776  by MEC407
 
I still think that a lot of it had to do with wanting to abandon some of the bad feelings associated with the name "Guilford." It wouldn't be the first time that a company has changed its name in an attempt to shed a negative image.
 #771786  by cpf354
 
MEC407 wrote:I still think that a lot of it had to do with wanting to abandon some of the bad feelings associated with the name "Guilford." It wouldn't be the first time that a company has changed its name in an attempt to shed a negative image.
I agree. You start a airline using a historic brand, and you have a railroad with a negative image, then what better opportunity to fold it under your flagship bussiness and share the brand. However I don't think they would have done it unless they expected to operate the airline.
 #771791  by MEC407
 
True. Having the airline go out of business was certainly not what they had planned. Weren't they even wanting to acquire widebody aircraft at one point? I don't know what they would have been able to afford, except perhaps some very well-used DC-10s... anything newer than that would probably have been much more than they would've wanted to spend. :P