Conrail


RedRyder77

RedRyder77

Member
I have a ton of questions about Conrail and my friend Bruette did a pretty great job of educating me on the failed merger of PRR and NYC but I'd love to know deeper detail from everyone. I understand Conrail can be pretty unpopular in certain circles...and perhaps just the opposite in others.

So I guess aside from any information and view points you may have on the "birth" of Conrail, I'd love to know how the some of the members here feel about it. Personally I always enjoyed seeing their equipment and run a few pieces on my layout but then again growing up in NJ and seeing nothing but NJ Transit all the time, as a little kid any time Conrail rolled by it was kind of a big deal--of course I had no idea of the logistics behind it.

So how do you feel about Conrail?
 
Never been a fan of it, as some of my favourite companies disappeared into it, NYNH&H, LV, RDG....a necessary evil if you ask me....lol
Wasn't it thanks to a hurricane it was formed, or more or less?
 
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I recall going to work on the morning of April 1, 1976. The day before, I worked for the Penn Central. On this "Day of Fools" in the Bicentennial Year, my co-workers and I were off on another adventure on the roller coaster that was Eastern railroading. One of the morning trains from Paoli to Philadelphia had the new Conrail Logo over the usual PC Logo, but not much else changed that first day. However, Conrail represented change, and working there ultimately became a source of pride, but on that first day, no one was sure.

Joe
 
I guess I have sort of mixed feelings about Conrail. Since I've always felt a certain kinship with the B&O/C&O, I never really paid much attention to them. I left the hobby in 1973, and it wasn't until 15 years later that my [then new] wife and I were temporarily living in Reading, PA, close to the former Reading main line that was now part of the Conrail system and seeing their blue-and-white SD40-2's every day. I was missing the good ol' days of the green and yellow diesels that used to run this very line, I had already seen plenty of Conrail stuff around Baltimore. However I did think the paint scheme was a major improvement over the former ugly Penn Central black and white.

Ten years later, after I had returned to the hobby, I saw them get swallowed up half by CSX and the other half by NS. Then I started missing the ol' blue-and-white, I guess it's just like that old Joni Mitchell song "You don't know what you got 'til it's gone."
 
WJLI26 said:
I recall going to work on the morning of April 1, 1976. The day before, I worked for the Penn Central. On this "Day of Fools" in the Bicentennial Year, my co-workers and I were off on another adventure on the roller coaster that was Eastern railroading. One of the morning trains from Paoli to Philadelphia had the new Conrail Logo over the usual PC Logo, but not much else changed that first day. However, Conrail represented change, and working there ultimately became a source of pride, but on that first day, no one was sure.

Joe
Click to expand...

Ah fellow New Jersean!...Hey this was a great post! If you care to shed a little more light on your time there or anything that happened afte that 1st day, I would really love to hear it!
 
I think Conrail is a huge success story.

From the biggest bankruptcy in history in it's day to being sold for a profit. The ultimate comeback story.

Ken, I like the Penn Central Black and White. I don't see many for me to buy and I don't have any, but I like the paint scheme. I guess I am in the minority, again, nothing new here.

I would like to have a Lionel Legacy U-boat in PC black and white.
 
I liked Conrail. Yes, my favorite RR disappeared into Conrail, but it just got better and better right up and until they tried a merger. Ah well...
 
Conrail wasn't just the PRR and the NYC. They formed the PC which was a disaster. They drug down the whole fragile NE railroad network. Conrail was the PC (NYC/PRR), EL, RDG, LV, CNJ, NH, LNE, LHR. After Conrail you could see just about any engine on any train. PC engines on the RDG, RDG engines on the PC, EL engines on both.

For the first couple years there were a lot of CR patch jobs in various degrees of quality. After a couple years the repaints started to show up.

It was a very interesting time.
 
It essentially boiled down to Conrail or nothing-that is a fair statement of the situation. Government did much to create the situation, but economic change was just as big, if not bigger contributor to the Northeast's "railroad problem". Much of the reason for the LV's and Reading's existence was anthracite coal-take that away due to the switch to natural gas and those railroads are badly hurt. What happened to the EL when the steel mills in Ohio started shutting down? Or the PC in Pittsburgh? In general, when the Industrial Belt became the Rust Belt?

In fact, many people don't realize this, but the LV filed for bankruptcy four days after the PC did, since it was majority owned by PC. In late 1973, the LV's bankruptcy trustee wanted to shut the whole line down-there was not enough money to meet the bills, much less payroll. The EL was a last-minute inclusion in Conrail-Roger Grant did an article in Trains magazine a few years ago about that.

A lot of employees got hurt by the Conrail's creation; Congress made changes in the law (perhaps reneged on is a better term?) about the lifetime employee protection guarantees that unions wanted and got in the original legislation creating Conrail that were changed about six or eight years after the merger took place. That created a lot of bitterness, and understandably so.
 
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