What If (insert railroad here) Still Existed?

jeff1959

Active member
I started this thread in hopes of generating some screenshots of some "what if's." What if your favorite fallen flag still existed. Some fallen flags have seen life on "Heritage Fleet" locomotives of the UP or BNSF. But what about some of the other ones?

Here's the start. What if the Chicago & Illinois Midland still existed? Would they have purchased GE Dash 9's? Could they have looked like this?

CampIMDash9_zps70b9f76f.jpg


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How about some other lines?
 
I'm gonna attempt the ATSF warbonnet and yellowbonnet on a GEVO and an SD70ACe's. Might do BN stuf too
 
If the PRR and Conrail could somehow exist together, that would be awesome, also if Reading, and LV, and EL didn't merge. Basically, If Conrail was a separate railroad, with the PRR, and if Penn Central didn't exist ever.
 
What if the Lynton & Barnstaple Railway survived in to British Railways ownership, and it was kept open as a tourist venture through to privatisation?
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If the PRR and Conrail could somehow exist together, that would be awesome, also if Reading, and LV, and EL didn't merge. Basically, If Conrail was a separate railroad, with the PRR, and if Penn Central didn't exist ever.

That's how I run things on my routes. I have Conrail, B&M, MEC, D&H, PRR, LV, CNJ, EL, Erie, LHR, NH, and many others still in existence. It's as though Conrail is just another company like the others. If you want to see what the Northeast looked like prior to Conrail, take a look at some older maps. You'd be amazed at how many different companies we had around here at one time all with their different paint schemes, engine models, and customized signals, switch stands, and other things that made them different.

John
 
Yeah, I know, there used to be so many class 1 railroads, like over 20, now there are just 5 I think.

It's sad isn't it!

When I was growing up, we had all these railroads still around, they weren't all in that great a shape by then, but they were still around. If things had been different, and there was a different attitude toward the railroads as there is now, many of them would still be here. Sadly, the PennCentral used it's power to squash the longtime competitors to the old NYC and PRR systems.

In my world in Trainz, these railroads still run the same routes as they did in real life, unlike the heritage units being a repaint of just another locomotive on the system.

John
 
It's sad isn't it!

When I was growing up, we had all these railroads still around, they weren't all in that great a shape by then, but they were still around. If things had been different, and there was a different attitude toward the railroads as there is now, many of them would still be here. Sadly, the PennCentral used it's power to squash the longtime competitors to the old NYC and PRR systems.

In my world in Trainz, these railroads still run the same routes as they did in real life, unlike the heritage units being a repaint of just another locomotive on the system.

John

Even today, railroads are kind of decreasing, I think. I remember when I was little I saw an NS power move going over a bridge that is still used today, and then it came back over a different bridge which I believe is no longer used. This bridge has this amazing stonework on it, the arches are made out of layers of bricks at an angle, so the bridge is diagonal, but the stones aren't. I haven't seen a train go on this bridge since then, which was a while ago.
 
What you see here, is what happened to the US infrastructure, slowly being dismantled, and falling into shambles.
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Some cities and tows were based on railroads building them ... some towns had 3 or many more individual RR's going through towns ... with almost all industries being served by rail ... Today, there are few industries served by rail ... Altoona once had 30,000 PRR employees ... now they have half a dozen car department workers, and less than a couple hundred employes in the Juniata Shops ... Hollidaysburg Car Shop was closed, Sam Rea Car Shop was closed, even Enola yard was closed a couple decades ago. The number of towers and yards closed, is in the hundreds of thousands, nationwide.

Luckily we can rebuild this 1850's to 1950's infrastructure in Trainz

You once were able to board a trolley in Holidaysburg PA, and ride it to Juniata for 15 cents, and another 25 cents to ride up to the mountaintop Wopsononock resort lookout ... today all that reamins is a few rotted ties and a hundred year old bent up RR spikes ... and all you can barely see is a horse / snowmobile trail ... All Gone !
 
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The biggest part of the railroad demise is our single-mode transportation mindset in the US. Instead of adopting railroads along with truck and air for freight transport, we threw everything at the new and improved highway system. Perhaps we are slowly turning things around, but in some cases it's too little and too late as our roads become clogged with trucks and cars.

There are areas in some states which once had a decent rail network now only have snowmobile trails for many of them, and those that remain are mere branch lines. New Hampshire comes to my mind when I think of this. The following major rail lines are no longer. The MEC Mountain Division, The Northern Railroad of New Hampshire (B&M route to White River Jct. via Concord), the old Cheshire Mainline via Keene up to Bellows Falls, VT. and the former Eastern RR above Newburyport to Portsmouth. All these lines, by the way, closed within the past 35 years or so too, and many were once double-track for most of their distance.

John
 
One thing to remember when considering the former rail network compared to the present one: the evolution of motor carriage equipment. I don't see a date on the map that cascaderailroad provided, but it's a safe bet that at the time the map was made, a large portion of the railcar fleet was 40 foot boxcars, with a volume of about 4000 cubic feet. The typical motor carrier trailer in service today has a volume of 5300 cubic feet. The old Rock Island had a branch, since taken up, which, due to the condition of the track, required a week to make a round trip. Highway conditions are such that a truck could make the round trip in about 4 hours.

Meow, the number of class I railroads was, at one time, much higher than 20, probably closer to 100. Consolidation has been going on for a long time.

ns
 
Well, that is accurate; Baldwin did cater to more than 20 Class 1 railroads. But there were in that number railroads which only purchased Baldwins, and there were a number of Class I railroqads which never purchased Baldwins, at least not before Baldwin merged with Lima and Hamilton.

BTW, my post was intended only to correct the fact, not to slight you.

ns
 
One thing to remember when considering the former rail network compared to the present one: the evolution of motor carriage equipment. I don't see a date on the map that cascaderailroad provided, but it's a safe bet that at the time the map was made, a large portion of the railcar fleet was 40 foot boxcars, with a volume of about 4000 cubic feet. The typical motor carrier trailer in service today has a volume of 5300 cubic feet. The old Rock Island had a branch, since taken up, which, due to the condition of the track, required a week to make a round trip. Highway conditions are such that a truck could make the round trip in about 4 hours.

Meow, the number of class I railroads was, at one time, much higher than 20, probably closer to 100. Consolidation has been going on for a long time.

ns

I wouldn't doubt that. That map to me looks like it dates back to before the 1920s by what I can see of the rail lines up in my area, which are on this map but disappeared around the Great Depression and then afterwards. This includes the WNR&P, Bradford to Newburyport, Wakefield to Newburyport, and the complete Cheshire mainline and its branches in New Hampshire.

The Rock Island, sadly, was a victim of many things going on in corporate America, which have only gotten worse. There was a management team that had no interest in running the railroad and only were there to suck out as much money from the company as they could. Patrick McGuinness and his team did this to the New Haven and the Boston and Maine and in the process bankrupted both companies in the 1960s. He got in trouble and went to jail after he got caught profiting from the sale of the B&M streamline cars. Today he would have gotten a golden parachute and then run for congress! Combine these antics with high taxes on the railroads, business moving away because the railroad couldn't serve them properly, high wages, and no money to upgrade, well then it's a no-go for any future. What's interesting is when the RI finally succumbed in 1980, its competitors couldn't wait to sap up some of its routes even though they wouldn't think of merging with them while they were still in operation. I guess we could call this a fire sale.

John
 
In my view, John, while your characterization is accurate in most respects, it is incomplete in others. I'm not sure that in the absence of the bad management you speak of, that the outcome with respect to railroading would have been so very different. The desire by the "typical American citizen" after WW II to have the independence that was a consequence of automobile ownership, combined with the growth of the airlines as a mass transit option pretty much did in the rail passenger service; the rise in importance of motor carriers as a competitor, first for LCL, and later for smaller volume carloads (that is car loads where the total weight was less than 30,000 or 40,000 pounds), combined with the loss of speed as a consequence of deferred maintenance took away much of the short haul business.

The map posted shows a great deal of redundancy, as the lines at that time were placed so as to keep almost all of the US population within about a half day's trip from a rail line. But the earlier map was based upon a half day's trip by horse and buggy, not motor vehicle. Some RI branches became redundant when it was faster for the farmers to drive to the nearest main line, than to load their cars at the local elevators, and wait for rail service over lines where the average speed was 10 miles per hour.

The RI, while suffering from these same changes as all of the other railroads was a slightly different case. In the late 1960's, there was a plan to split the RI at Kansas City, with the UP getting the properties from Kansas City and Denver North, and the SP getting the property from Kansas City and St. Louis South. The plan was ultimately approved by the ICC, in about 1975, and by that time the RI had deferred maintenance on the track to the extent that the UP backed out of the deal. By that time, it was too late to undo the damage, especially since the railroads were still largely regulated.

ns
 
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