Where Would They be Now?

If the railroads that were absorbed into they're current systems,were still around today, how do you think they would be doing? I have made a list of fallen flags for you choose from. List as many of these as you like, but make sure you list what you think they would be doing now. List also if you think they would have changed some of thier traditions [example: Southern changing from high hood to low.]
Have fun with it!!!
1. C&NW 2.New York Central. 3.Pennsylvania 4.Western Pacific 5.Southern 6.Illinois Central 7.Norfolk&Western 8.Southern Pacific 9.Rock Island 10.Milwaukee Road 11.Wabash 12.Canadian Northern 13.Seaboard 14.Chessie System 15.New Haven 16.MKT 17.Wisconsin Central 18.Great Northern 19.Northern Pacific 20.Missouri Pacific 21.Rio Grande 22.Burlington Route
23.Soo Line 24.British Columbia 25.Illinois Terminal 26.Louisville&Nashville
27.Tennessee Central 28.Chicago&Illinois Midland 29.Chicago&Eastern Illinois
30.Nickel Plate Road 31.Monon 32.Santa Fe 33.Central Pacific
34.Gulf Mobile&Ohio 35.Maine Central 36.Colorado&Southern 37.Reading
38.Lehigh Valley 39.Erie-Lackawanna 40.Western Maryland 41.Delaware&Hudson 42.Susquehanna 43.CNJ 44.DM&E 45.IC&E 46.Boston&Maine 47.Maine Central 48.Cotton Belt 49.ACL 50.RF&P
**List Away!**

Seaboard would probably keep a constant business here in Florida.

Who knows how management would roll around here?

Local network CBS4 has even criticized CSX for loose pins in certain industrial rails seeing rock trains and a manifest switcher. SCL would have probably answered to poor maintenance.

Choice of signalling and abandonments would have been different.

SCL/SAL would probably have introduced a new paint scheme too.

The silver service trains wouldn't have fed into Amtrak. Juice trains would be a hassle between the SAL, ACL, and RF&P and what CSX calls the S line would have not been trimmed to two parts and would not have ended in NC.

PRR

The PRR (Harrisburg-Pittsburgh Line) would also have been electrified all the way to Chicago, with a high speed dedicated passenger train right of way, separate of freight (like other Countries do). Possibly employing a "Chunnel" type boring machine to bore a hugely long tunnel (bypassing the Horseshoe Curve). Hey, the technology is there...it's not so far fetched ! A Pennsy TGV train ! (someone reskin this idea)

How About International?!

And for our British Friends,
1. LNER 2.Southern 3.GWR 4.[well, thats all I know!:hehe: ]
Also, any of our Australian users, list your fallen flags too.
*For USA users, please keep within the list, to keep it organized!
Thank You!

I think that Tampa Union Station would be up to about 15 tracks with 10 trains a day, Uceta yard would be bustling, Yeoman yards would be over flowing, the Tampa Streetcar would be full on non-peak hours, and my city's East street would no longer be, it would be a track and a railway station. Now the city paved over it and created a street run. I'm tempted to create something like this for TS09 when I reinstall it

PS- The BIG Four comprises of GWR, LNER, LMS, and Southern

I think Illinois Central would have taken over Wisconsin Central and Pennsylvania would have merged with Milwaukee Road or CNW.

The Reading probably would have continued to haul anthracite, but would have begun to haul other cargo too. Also, because PRR and NYC never merged, Reading would have probably not had to join Conrail, because it wouldn't have screwed up their routes as much.

New Haven

The NH probably would be dead, they were already dying when they were forced to merge with PC. If the weren't, on the other hand, they probably would've been merged with the B&M (if Patrick McGinnis had his way they would). I dunno, it's hard to say. The electrification to Boston might have been made sooner and the NEC would've been run exclusively by the PRR (or PC).

tbob said:

The NH probably would be dead, they were already dying when they were forced to merge with PC. If the weren't, on the other hand, they probably would've been merged with the B&M (if Patrick McGinnis had his way they would). I dunno, it's hard to say. The electrification to Boston might have been made sooner and the NEC would've been run exclusively by the PRR (or PC).

Click to expand...

I agree and if Mr. McGuiness had not been skimming the profits off the top, they would have done better. The burning of the P-bridge pretty much did them in on the west end. This also affected the LH & NE, LH & HR, CNJ, and many other roads.

The NYC would still be running its Water Level Route like it used to be and there wouldn't have been the stupid backup manuver that PC instituted for their passenger trains near Albany. With the special move, the Lakeshore Limited took 5 or 7 hours from Boston to Albany until the line was put back in by Amtrak in the 1980s.

The old B&M, MEC, and D&H would never have become part of Guilford only to be chopped up into bits with many non-mainline branches not even getting a chance of becoming a shortline. The MEC Mountain Division would still be hosting manifest freights across the White Mountains and the yard at St. Johnsbury, VT would still see MEC and B&M switchers. The Calais branch would never become weeds, both the low and high roads would still be hosting MEC traffic, and so would the Maine coast branch.

On the B&M, we never would have lost the New Haven Lowell Branch, the Canal Route in CT, the Connecticut River line in NH and VT, or recently the small network of remaining lines in greater Boston and the North Shore. These branches were quite profitable for the B&M, but didn't fit into the scheme of things as a bridge route instead of a local route.

The D&H lost it's line under the famous Starrucca Viaduct during the Guilford years as all as a host of other branches. They too were a victim of becoming a east-west bridge route between Buffalo and North Main Jct, ME.

Let's go back in time to stop the mergers from happening.

I only wish!

John

illinoiscentral said:

[example: Southern changing from high hood to low.]

Click to expand...

Not funny.

Sorry for the offense SR6900 but this was an example. It would have happened any way because the Federal Railway Admistration mandated the new North American Safety Cab. Someone should reskin a Dash9 in Southern livery. Anyway back to the subject!

I for one think C&NW and Soo would have merged with the Milwaukee Road as their northwoods operations dwindled, and WC Ltd would still have merged with The Soo Line before that.

illinoiscentral said:

Sorry for the offense SR6900 but this was an example. It would have happened any way because the Federal Railway Admistration mandated the new North American Safety Cab. Someone should reskin a Dash9 in Southern livery. Anyway back to the subject!

Click to expand...

Southern went with high hoods for safety. So it might not have.

The east Broad top had they never stopped running as a revenue line...would have built all the way To the pa turnpike and maybe farther,and would have started getting diseals and steel sided cars. Had The PRR survive...Amtrak would have been put off for awhile and Conrail might never have been made

In the beginning...at least in Johnstown, PA

In the beginning there was PRR and B&O. Then they became PC and Chessie. Then some terrible happened and PC became Conrail. Then Conrail became NS and Chessie became CSX. But guess what? The tracks stayed the same.:hehe:

One person actually making a model of his concept.
http://www.nycsystem.com/
Under partners, the C&NW link is inactive but the RI link works since it is his also.
http://www.rockrail.com/
Also know of a model article where someone has a modern NYO&W layout.

I don't agree with certain things he did such as a modern NYCS pretty much becoming what Conrail was then getting Guilford/Pan-Am. It got too much and creates no competition in the entire NorthEast, even with all the mergers that created the current Class 1s they don't really have a lock on such a large area.
Either I would have NYC merge with someone else before Penn Central, probably someone it ran power pools with like AT&SF, RI, B&M (maybe MEC), MP, maybe CB&Q or SP. Haven't looked into all the details but the system maps from just one merger work better. Or about the time of Conrail's end, I'd split it with modern NYCS getting roughly what CSX has now, claim it would be done to ensure competition in Class 1s.
For competition's sake, I'd also have PRR get what NS got in the second scenario. I don't know who would be a good choice of a merger partner for the first. But I would keep the PRR alive since you have to have competition in an area, probably NH would go to PRR so it could also access Boston and not get locked out of New England.
In the second scenario, I would even change the current Conrail that operates shared assets into regionals using old identities, such as NJ shared assets become a new CNJ. (Not to be confused with this paper CNJ I only discovered recently.)
Another interesting scenario would have been if the Alphabet Route RRs had merged but I read NKP wouldn't agree to that, would have made a third competitor into the NorthEast area.

High hoods are much cooler anyway.

StorkNest said:

One person actually making a model of his concept.
http://www.nycsystem.com/
Under partners, the C&NW link is inactive but the RI link works since it is his also.
http://www.rockrail.com/
Also know of a model article where someone has a modern NYO&W layout.

I don't agree with certain things he did such as a modern NYCS pretty much becoming what Conrail was then getting Guilford/Pan-Am. It got too much and creates no competition in the entire NorthEast, even with all the mergers that created the current Class 1s they don't really have a lock on such a large area.
Either I would have NYC merge with someone else before Penn Central, probably someone it ran power pools with like AT&SF, RI, B&M (maybe MEC), MP, maybe CB&Q or SP. Haven't looked into all the details but the system maps from just one merger work better. Or about the time of Conrail's end, I'd split it with modern NYCS getting roughly what CSX has now, claim it would be done to ensure competition in Class 1s.
For competition's sake, I'd also have PRR get what NS got in the second scenario. I don't know who would be a good choice of a merger partner for the first. But I would keep the PRR alive since you have to have competition in an area, probably NH would go to PRR so it could also access Boston and not get locked out of New England.
In the second scenario, I would even change the current Conrail that operates shared assets into regionals using old identities, such as NJ shared assets become a new CNJ. (Not to be confused with this paper CNJ I only discovered recently.)
Another interesting scenario would have been if the Alphabet Route RRs had merged but I read NKP wouldn't agree to that, would have made a third competitor into the NorthEast area.

Click to expand...

Some of these mergers were almost mergers back in the last century. For years the NH owned a good hunk of stock of the B&M so under their ownership extra track was laid on the Easter Railroad. This line is now the Newburyport commuter rail branch, but in the early days it went all the way to Portland. In Lynn, MA there is a 4-track bridge which was part of the upgrading program that the NH started. They didn't get too far with this project due to a crash in the early 1900s.

The Pennsy and NH had teamed up for years and I think the Pennsy owned the NH for a bit. There were a few Pennsy position light signals on the NH ROW so they could run through trains on the electric division.

According to the great meger plans as drawn up by the ICC during the 1950s, the D&H was supposed to be part of the N&W along with LV and the Erie was supposed to join the NYC. This never happened, but a controlling group owned both the D&H and N&W for a while and it was possible to see a nice bright red N&W caboose on the end of a D&H freight until they were abolished during the Guilford years.

The Pan Am Southern aka PAS, is a joint venture between NS and Guilford. NS is pumping loads of money into this project to upgrade the rail infrastructure on the West End that has so sadly deteriorated under GTI ownership. PanAm will run the trains under agreement with NS. The East End will still be run by PanAm RR as the PanAm, so in a sense the old B&M will be split between two companies.

If anything maybe this will lead to further joint ventures and eventually Guilford will be out of the picture totally.

John

jadebullet said:

High hoods are much cooler anyway.

Click to expand...

I totally agree! I'm a fan of Norfolk Southern because they still run high hoods, it really shows how realible those units are.
Cheers, Woody.

Personally, I think it should've gone like this for my Loyal road.
Lehigh Valley, would've Merged with the Nickleplate,(And actually had a chance to back in the 50s.) but consolidated so that they would run under their own names. Being a shared family, with a easterly connection to New York City from the Valley Lines, and a westerly connection in Chicago from the Nickle Plate, they would've grown quite strong. The Valley-Plate family would later absorb the Wabash, and continue to run it on a part-system basis. They would also fight off the N&W from buying the NKP, and the Pennsy from taking control of the Valley. As time went on, and all your other roads existed, The Valley-Plate family would then agree to merge with the Milwaukee Road in the late 70s, before MILW pulled its western ext. All three would live on to be the 'Big-three' and would all keep a healthy roster of ALCos, EMDs and GEs.
This is actually a cool thread. I've always envisioned that happening.
Sean