Eastern Railroad Discussion > PC Bankruptcy 1970

Lest we forget, today is the 31st anniversary of Penn Central throwing in the towel and becoming the biggest bankruptcy in the history of the U.S., happening just a little over two years after the PRR/NYC merger. I never got a chance to photograph the road, but PC units turned up all over the place for years. Pictured is E-unit 4060 in Bloomington, Ill., on Amtrak's Milwaukee-St. Louis "Prairie State" Aug. 26, 1973 (with two domes!). The train was delayed because of mechanical problems with the engine. I don't know the heritage of 4060, but it was renumbered 275 by Amtrak and retired 8/75.

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Super pic., thanks for sharing!
Steve

It's gotta be a former NYC unit, since it doesn't have the Pennsy lift hooks on the front of the nose.

Ah yes. Black engines and red ink! PC was everything and nothing at all, and had to deal with full-crew laws, the ICC and excessive taxation from every burg and county it ran through.

This line is gone completely, alas, but shouldn't have been ripped up. Here we have a westbound passing about where a Walmart store is now on the Panhandle just east of Post Road westbound towards Indianapolis in 1970. At least here the road was trying to make a few bucks hauling manifest freight across a bleak Hoosier landscape!

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To timecruncher, is that the line that used to run east through Piqua, OH?

The photo of #4060 brings back fond memories. My introduction to railfanning was at the hand of my father at Fort Wayne's Baker Street station and watching ex PC E units rolling eastbound, snaking their way off the Pennsy main onto the station track with Broadway in from Chicago circa 1971-73. I was drawn in by the big black beasts, not knowing what a 12-567 engine was, but knowing that I loved the sound of two of them chanting away in the belly of the beast. The E units were ragged looking, and the mixed bag of passenger equipment looked kind of silly, but I was too young to care. I was so moved by the big engines that at some point I went around the basement (where my own Lionel set was) and wrote PC on the walls, water softner, furnace, water tank and Mom's washer with a green crayon. Little did I know that I was hooking up with a real loser of a railroad, but I was six years old. A couple of the PC's even survive today on the walls. Who knew they would outlast even Conrail?

Really unfortunate the ICC allowed that merger, instead of either
going along with the C&O (Robert R Young) to merge the C&O/B&O/NYC
and let the PRR merge subsidiaries or having an interest in N&W /
Wabash?DT&I (i think) Lehigh Valley /Ann Arbor .There was also
talk briefly in the '60's of PRR & ATS&F. Or mergers crossing the
Mississippi. Anyway it all would have evolved to where it is now
4 big ones in the U.S. Ron

Only snag was that C&O could only afford to finance one loser. That was B&O. It could hardly take on a basket case such as NYC too. Maybe a staged merger over time???

That C&O / N&W merger opens an interesting can of worms though...... Imagine a combined C&O / B&O / WM / N&W / NKP / Wabash system.

Not to mention Erie Lackawanna, Delaware & Hudson and Boston & Maine, all of which were included in the N&W/C&O proposal and later came under the umbrella of Dereco, an N&W subsidiary.

Yes and No. You could access the line through Piqua from this line at Richmond, Indiana, about 60 miles in the direction we're looking in this photo. This was the somewhat famous Panhandle mainline that ran from Pittsburgh, through Columbus, Xenia, Dayton and Indianapolis to St. Louis. Pennsy's former St. Louis mainline. In PC days most freight was diverted up through Union City and Piqua to bypass some heavy grades in the Miami River valley near Dayton, Ohio.

Bits and pieces of the Panhandle still exist, but are mostly operated by regional Ohio Central east of Columbus. Between London, Ohio and Columbus, this was the line kept by PC, Conrail and ultimately NS to this day. West of Terre Haute, Indiana, it is part of CSX' Cleveland-St. Louis mainline inherited in the Conrail break-up.

If you stood where I took this pic today, you would see the backside of strip centers and apartment buildings (I think). The entire railroad is gone from Indy (Thorne Interlocking) to London, Ohio with the exception of a few pieces around Richmond, Indiana and Dayton, Ohio.

This would be 37 years, not 31, but enough quibbling. Whoops, I just realized how old the posts above are, sorry for my smart remarks!

It's always my endless speculation about what the current four huge Class I's wish had never been ripped up and if anyone in management ever thinks the previous management was penny-wise and pound-foolish.

51 years ago now.
Hard to believe all the changes.

Posted from Android

The decimation in the number of active Railroaders is amazing.

Posted from Android

ATS shoe problems?

4060 was ex NYC RR 4060 built April 1952.

Posted from Android

dan Wrote:
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> ATS shoe problems?

I don't think so. The former GM&O through Bloomington, Ill., and the location of this image, did not have cab signalling or ATS in the Amtrak era. It had in years earlier a simple ATS system when still double-tracked. I  think it was somewhat like the C&NW's system, with minimal indications in the cab, and oriented more to the "train stop" function than to speed- or route-signalling in the cab. But the double track on the ex-GM&O had been pulled up years before Amtrak, and with it the ATS. Plenty of B&O-style CPL signals were still around (remnants of former B&O control of predecessor Alton decades earlier), but no ATS / ATC cab signalling.

On Amtrak out of St. Louis, I can recall seeing cab-signalling shoes being attached to and tested at St. Louis Union Station on ex-PC / nee-PRR Amtrak E-units that were headed east onto ex-Pennsy trackage in Illinois (on Amtrak's National Limited). But not on the Chicago trains on the former GM&O, nor on trains west to KC or south to Little Rock on ex-MP track, which also did not have cab signalling nor ATS.

Later edit: On the other hand and upon further reflection, maybe it actually is something related to the ATS shoe hanger on the truck that perhaps was acting up and causing a problem or fault, even though the shoe needn't have been hung and in service on the GM&O. You are right in observing that everyone is bent over on the left side of the unit, apparently looking at the truck about in the area where the ATS / ATC shoe would have been located on ex-PRR unit. And also on a PC-era ex-NYC unit (which the 4060 is). Photo in PC paint with the ATS / ATC shoe visible on the third axle of the lead truck: https://www.thedieselshop.us/NYCelegant-8.HTML

If so, it might not have been a problem with ATS / ATC in particular as far as it being active and needed, but a "shadow problem" with the inactive shoe assembly somehow still causing a problem. If so, then you're right, dan. Active or inactive, if it faults out, however it faults out, it's still a problem.

And just to be clear before someone else notices and calls it, I think the device hung on the engine was technically known as the "pickup" or "inductor", and the device mounted along the track which communicated with it was technically the "shoe" (known in much the rest of the world as a "balise" in the past, and often today simply as a "transponder"). That said, almost everyone I've ever spoken to about such topics back in PC days (including some railroaders I've spoken to) called the device hung on the engine truck the "shoe" (which actually seems more logical linguistically). Go figure....

In any case, one more memory of the legacy on Penn Central as we recall it today. Legacy cab signalling / ATS systems, including from PC predecessors, had a big impact on Amtrak operations in its early years.

MC



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 06/21/21 14:16 by ironmtn.