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Do Lines, The By Edward Lewis The story of the railroads created to take over
The Do Lines By Edward Lewis
The stosry of the railroads created to take over the unwanted by Conrail
Hard Cover with dust jacket SIGNED
Copyright 1978
124 pages
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments 4
An Introduction to the "DO Lines" 5
The Future is Looking Up in Hillsdale! 9
Railroading in Northern Michigan 23
Honesdale's Railroad 43
The Blue & Gray Line 55
Steam Trains Along the Brandywine 69
Tom Zitter's "Dream Railroad" 85
Chesapeake Bay Railroading 89
Diesel Freight and Electric Trolleys 103
A Fight for Survival 109
An Obituary 115
Expansions 118
Bibliography 120
The story of the railroads created to take over lines unwanted by Conrail - Gettysburg Railroad, Hillsdale County Railway, Lackawaxen & Stourbridge, Michigan Northern, Middletown & Hummelstown, Octoraro, Towanda-Monroeton Shippers Lifeline, Virginia & Maryland, Western Ohio Railroad.
After more than ten years of study and negotiation, the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central Railroad merged their companies on February 1, 1968. The Penn Central Transportation Company was formed to operate their railroad properties and PC became the largest American railroad in history with more than 20,000 miles of track and assets worth $4.5 billion. By combining management and eliminating duplicate facilities, the railroad hoped to save enough money to restore its operation to past levels of prosperity, however the attempt failed. On June 21, 1970, the country was jarred by the news that Penn Central had filed a petition for reorganization under Section 77 of the Bankruptcy Act.
Penn Central's failure was the result of many factors including mismanagement, governmental over-regulation, labor agreements so staggering in cost that the company couldn't possibly afford them, competition from other modes of transportation, too many light density branch lines - and just plain bad luck. What was worse, its failure contributed to the bankruptcy of six other class I railroads: the Ann Arbor, Boston & Maine, Erie Lackawanna, Jersey Central, Lehigh Valley and Reading. While all of these companies anticipated traditional income-based reorganizations, it soon became evident that such a development was most unlikely - the problems to be overcome were seemingly too great.
In view of this, Congress was forced to address itself to the problem of getting the railroads in the Northeast and Midwest back on their feet. Its answer was the Regional Rail Reorganization Act of 1973 which became effective on January 2, 1974. The Act had several very important provisions including:
-establishment of the United States Railway Association to plan and finance the restructuring of those bankrupt railroads which could not affect reorganization on their own,
-establishment of the Consolidated Rail Corporation (Conrail) as the vehicle to operate all or part of the reorganized rail system,
-abandonment of services (including railroad lines) which did not cover costs, and
-authorization of a joint Federal-state subsidy program for temporary service continuation and
improvements on lines which would not be included in Conrail or in one of the solvent railroads.
The RRR Act also set up a timetable for accomplishing each step of the restructuring process. The first phase mandated by the law was a hastily-completed study by Claude S. Brinegar, Secretary of Transportation, titled "Rail Service in the Midwest and Northeast Region." This two-volume, three-part report released less than a month after the Act took effect detailed rail traffic in the region on 184 local commercial zone maps. Lines which DOT felt had little traffic were marked "potentially excess." This early emphasis on the so-called "light-density-line problem" continued throughout the entire planning process and received a disproportionate share of attention in the view of many observers, including the Interstate Commerce Commission's Rail Services Planning Office which was set up by the RRR Act to monitor USRA's planning activities. It seemed as though of all the problems facing the railroad industry, the light-density lines were the least political and perhaps the only area where serious changes could be made. It was certainly clear to even the slowest of politicians that labor could not be forced to agree to changes in working conditions which were inferior to those currently in effect and only minor changes in governmental control would be accepted by Federal and state regulators. Management couldn't be legislated, competition restrained or luck controlled, so all that was left were many miles of light-density trackage which had too little business to cover the fully-allocated cost of their operation. Some of this track was already the subject of abandonment applications before the ICC, but much of it had never been considered by the railroads as potential lines to be discontinued. In the past, the law placed the burden of proof on the railroads to show that "public convenience and necessity no longer required the operation" of a given line. Under the RRR Act, the burden of proof was shifted temporarily to shippers and communities and it became their obligation to prove that they generated enough traffic to cover the entire cost of providing rail service in their areas.
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