Nostalgia & History > Moyer's Monument on Donner Pass 1996

Ed Moyer was the guy who came to SP and decided that less was better. His renowned achievement was to remove key sections of double track and create efficient bottlenecks. It has been stated that some of the rail and ties lifted from Donner Pass went south to the Sunset route. This was started in 1993 and it continues to cause log jams for UP when 3-4 trains are trying to get through the area.

Between Switch 9 and Shed 10 (Emigrant Gap and Cisco CA) the line uses a combination of both uphill/downhill alignments for the single main. Many are hopeful that 2 tracks will be restored, but so far it's just a rumor.

Here SP 258 East gets going at Switch 9 after waiting for a westbound train.

June 1996

-Lee

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Interesting to see what it looked like with a date of 1996, lots of boxcars without graffiti.

Strategies have changed but the infrastructure budget hasn't kept pace, endless trains require endless tracks. Storing and re-prioritizing trains outside of yards require more parallel tracks called sidings.
t4p.

Ed Moyers was another Wall Street darling from the Illinois Central (think Hunter Harrison more recently) who endeared himself to investors by single-tracking the IC mainline, temporarily cutting the MOW ratio, eliiminating the new rail "maintenance capital" budget, and of course creating bottlenecks that plague CN and Amtrak north of Carbondale, IL to this day.  Don't know if we can blame him for the dysfunctional grade crossing warning system that can't detect short (i.e., passenger) trains, but it dated to around the time of the Illinois Division CTC project.  When Ed got the SP job after (because of?) working his magic in the Midwest, he tried the same approach on the SP.  I'll let our many West Coast colleagues opine on how well he succeeded - I'm from the Midwest and prefer to stay close to home with my observations.

Many parts of the IC mainline are (celebrating) the thirtieth anniversary of the Moyers/Harrison "appetite for destruction" tour, which also created capacity pinch points from Chicago to New Orleans. All to make a leaner, more efficient railroad. Snake oil at its finest.

With all due respect, and coming from someone who hates EH Harrison, I remember the Moyer's days well with the SP.  Left out of the discussion above was SP's precarious financial condition back in those days.  There wasn't any money to spend on capacity improvements for the growing traffic on the Sunset route, which was already getting extremely congested; so one solution was to take up capacity where it did not appear to be neededany longer, then use those resources where they were immediately needed.  I think many forget, or are too young to know, there was indeed an even bigger question if the SP was going to financially survive at all.  I suppose one could say the new SP felt the same way, so they took UP's offer to purchase them before they collapsed.

I think there is very little correlation between Harrison and Moyers.  Harrison out right sold out financially solid and good performing companies to the greed of Wall Street through use of his PSR philosophy; Moyers was trying to keep a company from bankruptcy - trying to work with what little he had to work with - just my opinion and thoughts here...



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/07/21 08:35 by wyeth.

There seems to be some discussion about simply not being able to purchase new rail at the time as well, nobody made it anymore.

Sunset Route had a more optimistic future with the Harbor and hopes for Intermodal. Donner, most of the D&RGW or the Modoc was more heavy lumber freight with less concern about schedules. Of course all that changed as well.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/06/21 20:02 by TCnR.

I'm never gonna forget hearing how pissed "The Bear" was about that move because that actually screwed up the plow operations during the winter!

I'll just say that as a young child, my parents taught me that serious mainlines were double track--single  track routes were "branchlines" in their vocabulary.  I surmise some of this came from my mother's experiences of Chicago to Florida trips in the 20s.   ACL advertised double track all the way to Miami (via FEC from Jax)  Certainly the B&O and PRR of that era were double or better on most routes I traveled.  The first single track main I experienced on a first class RR was the Q. which in the 60s was a well manicured  high speed route.  In contrast, my experience of single track SAL was a nail biting  hour plus late Silver Comet to Atlanta; making my connection to an L&N excursion train literally by its later than scheduled departure.   Route of Courteous Service? yes, but on time, not so much.    Yes, SP was in dire straits; have to chuckle because the Harriman borg had to buy 4+ of the Gould nuisance RRs to get back the SP they had been forced to divest in the anti-trust era.  
Best thing we could do?  rewrite real estate tax rates to incent better maintenance and full double track on the few mainlines which have escaped the abandonment pandemic of 40 years of Staggers.  
 

wyeth Wrote:

> With all due respect, and coming from someone who
> hates EH Harrison, I remember the Moyer's days
> well with the SP.  Left out of the discussion
> above was SP's precarious financial condition back
> in those days.  There wasn't any money to spend
> on capacity improvements

At the time, SP was owned by Phil Anschutz's large and diversified holding company.  Was the whole enterprise in dire financial straits at the time, or did it merely not wish to invest capital in its railroads?

Evan_Werkema Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> wyeth Wrote:
>
> > With all due respect, and coming from someone
> who
> > hates EH Harrison, I remember the Moyer's days
> > well with the SP.  Left out of the discussion
> > above was SP's precarious financial condition
> back
> > in those days.  There wasn't any money to
> spend
> > on capacity improvements
>
> At the time, SP was owned by Phil Anschutz's large
> and diversified holding company.  Was the whole
> enterprise in dire financial straits at the time,
> or did it merely not wish to invest capital in its
> railroads?

SP was purchased by Rio Grande Industries, which was owned by Phil Anschutz (he set RGI up as a stand alone entity in his organization from what I understand - so no help from other "sister" companies which Anschutz owned).  Originally, he had taken Rio Grande Industries private, but later went public again with RGI by selling shares in the stock market.  One major reason for this was that RGI had very large debt levels from the buyout of the SP and assumption of its debt.  In addition, RGI for years "bled red ink" on the income statements, mostly surviving on selling off what few land assets the SP had left after most of SP's non-rail assets were stripped away by the Santa Fe in it's attempted merger with SP.  After the SP purchase, RGI had trouble turning a profit and the operating ratio's (a useful tool back then, not the "holy grail" it is today) was always high (usually well into the 90's or above 100 (operating loss)).  When RGI went public again, there was immense pressure to make it profitable to encourage much needed investment into the company - thus the main reason Moyers was hired with his (seemingly(?)) successful turnaround of the Illinois Central Railroad.

About the only way RGI had to invest in parts of its system that were growing, and showed the most hope of growth, was cannibalizing parts of the system that had over capacity that wasn't any longer needed, as money for capital improvements were not there.  SP had many places where this was the case as SP's traffic patterns (like everyone else's), had dramatically shifted during this era; the former "Transcontinental Railroad" had changed and was in decline.  At the time, this looked like clearly the case for Donner Pass as that line was down to only about five trains each direction, and of course Amtrak.  I'm definitely not an authority on Donner Pass for sure, but back in those days, I doubt (correct me if I'm wrong) that SP had very much trouble with congestion up there after the removal of the sections of double track, with only about 10-12 trains a day.  What congestion and issues with winter operations there were, were probably acceptable when compared to where those assets were neeeded the most.

I will also give Moyers credit for attempting to "cannibalize" places that really had excess capacity.  That is a far, far, far cry from today where Harrison and PSR is cannibalizing good, healthy railroads for the sake of profit and Wall Street.

Fred Fraily gave an excellent coverage overview of the modern SP under RGI ownership in a Trains Magazine article in the early 90's.  It was a great behind the scenes, inside look at the SP of the early 90's, with very candid looks at it's problems and the kind of hole it was in back then.  Off the subject a little, unfortunately, one doesn't get to read good, down to earth with all the dirt, truthful articles now days in Trains by Bill Stephens - I get so tired of reading sound bites from PR people that is as slanted as our politics are now days.  Now this is not a Bill Stephens bashing, I understand how he must try to balance his reporting so as to not alienate those companies he relies on for information and in working with; but I sure do wish we could get a good, candid look at the PSR railroads now days to see both sides of this story.  As much as I will always hate EH Harrison (I dislike big ego's and hate him for his lack of compassion for people), but he does have concepts in his PSR philosophy that are valid and should be put to use by the railroads.  However, it certainly appears that the railroads have just "picked and choosen" bits and pieces and then twisted the rest to use as PR promotional materials, of EHH's PSR philosphy that they now use to cannibalize their companies with (EHH did this himself when he was in control of CN, CP, and CSX).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/07/21 08:33 by wyeth.

Evan_Werkema Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> At the time, SP was owned by Phil Anschutz's large
> and diversified holding company.  Was the whole
> enterprise in dire financial straits at the time,
> or did it merely not wish to invest capital in its
> railroads?

Much of  what Moyers did on the SP/D&RGW/SSW  was to gin up the the price so Anshutz could flog off the combined system on whomever, most likely the UP.  That way Anshutz could personally  make a billion dollars using the  SP/D&RGW resources at little or no cost to himself.  Has anyone ever calculated how much the 'new SP' made by selling off all the old PE lines for mass transit?  And why pay those pesky, overpaid  track maintenance guys (900 laid off one year, 1994 as I recall)  when there aren't that many derailments?  Just another example of looters getting a hold a company for the purpose of self fulfillment, never mind the employees,  customers and others that would be adversely impacted.

wyeth Wrote:

> mostly surviving on selling off
> what few land assets the SP had left after most of
> SP's non-rail assets were stripped away by the
> Santa Fe in it's attempted merger with SP. 

The melodrama that played out wasn't really a case of big bad evil John Santa Fe stealing the deed to the Espee Ranch and casting poor Scarlet Gray into a life of destitution.  As you indicate, the ranch was already mortgaged and operating at a loss, and a marriage to Uncle John and his Santa Fe family estate looked like a way out.  The two families combined their non-rail assets while awaiting the ICC's blessing.  To the shock and horror of all, the commission rejected the marriage and furthermore required the family to put one or both railroads up for adoption.  Thus it was that poor Scarlet fell into the custody of another rich man (Anschutz) whose holding company also had large non-rail holdings.  Unfortunately, from your description it sounds like he wasn't keen to spend those assets to try and help his troubled ward turn her life around.  After years of neglect and privation, he ultimately married her off to old Uncle Pete, but that's next week's episode...

Evan_Werkema Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> wyeth Wrote:
>
> > mostly surviving on selling off
> > what few land assets the SP had left after most
> of
> > SP's non-rail assets were stripped away by the
> > Santa Fe in it's attempted merger with SP. 
>
> The melodrama that played out wasn't really a case
> of big bad evil John Santa Fe stealing the deed to
> the Espee Ranch and casting poor Scarlet Gray into
> a life of destitution.  As you indicate, the
> ranch was already mortgaged and operating at a
> loss, and a marriage to Uncle John and his Santa
> Fe family estate looked like a way out.  The two
> families combined their non-rail assets while
> awaiting the ICC's blessing.  To the shock and
> horror of all, the commission rejected the
> marriage and furthermore required the family to
> put one or both railroads up for adoption.  Thus
> it was that poor Scarlet fell into the custody of
> another rich man (Anschutz) whose holding company
> also had large non-rail holdings.  Unfortunately,
> from your description it sounds like he wasn't
> keen to spend those assets to try and help his
> troubled ward turn her life around.  After years
> of neglect and privation, he ultimately married
> her off to old Uncle Pete, but that's next week's
> episode...

I wasn't trying to say that Santa Fe essentially "raped" Southern Pacific's in taking their assets, just that yes, when RGI got the SP, essentially all the vast amounts of SP Corporations non-rail assets had already been moved to the Santa Fe; because as you said, the non-railroad corporate entities had already merged together.  And I agree with you about Anschutz, with all the money he had available, he could have helped stabalize the RGI after the SP purchase.  As I recall, even when Anschutz purchased RGI back in the early 80's, he saddled RGI with the debt load for that purchase as well.  I got the impression he wanted to play with trains, but didn't want to actually have to pay for them.  Then again, BNSF probably doesn't get much, if anything, from Berkshire Hathaway; in fact, it's the other way around (BNSF must give to the "mothership".

What I find interesting...  There's always a lot of talk about SP's well known weak financial conditions, but I never realized how precarious the ATSF financial position was getting - until latter years when more information has come out.  I imagine trying to ward off all those hostile takeovers really hurt the ATSF's long term financial aspects.  Seeing the same shit now days, except at least for the time being, the railroads have strong finances right now - wonder how long that will last.