RE: (erielack) Some more food for thought...

["Tupaczewski, Paul R (Paul)" <paultup_@_lucent.com>]

Joe Fisher asked:

> After reading the above paragraph, I get this vision in my 
> head that the core of the railroad was just a few hairs over 
> un-operable, visions of SD-45-2's rocking back and forth 
> along worn out R.O.W. at 15 miles per hour.
> 
> So the question is, how bad was it really? Anyone got some 
> photos of the trackage right before "C-Day"?

I have no pictures, but the Green Frog 2-tape EL video has some pretty telling shots of SD45 and trains rocking like crazy. Pristine it was not, but somehow the EL was able to keep excellent schedules on their hotshots...

Remember that the Delaware Division was also becoming pretty beaten up (hence the movement of traffic to the DL&W side)


 
> A.) What was the finacial condition of the Santa Fe at the 
> time, and could the ATSF properly rehabilitated the EL like 
> John P. Fishwick and Dereco should've done, but didn't.

ATSF was strong, but you need to remember, that an EL-ATSF merger would probably have been shot down by the ICC (a transcontinental railroad with no competition? Bah!)



 
> B.) The impression I get from all this is that Maxwell and 
> company were just tired of trying to save the EL at this 
> point. It was easier to surrender, than to further explore 
> the somehow possible control of the EL by the ATSF. 
> Interestingly however, at the time of the ATSF studies, 
> nothing was guaranteed in stone, so my feeling is the 
> trustees in a sense just wanted to quit, and letting the EL 
> fail for the final year of its life was easy.
> 
> Is it really just me, or was this the "final plan" to rid 
> themselves of the railroad?

I don't know, it's hard to say. In retrospect, it seems that all the Northeastern roads were truly hosed by 1976, EL included (though arguably, the EL was in the best shape of all the bankrupts). I think the EL was hoping for that "EL-MARC" (Mid Atlantic Rail Corp) scenario, since it knew that after the formation of CR, it would be surrounded by one giant railroad, and it needed to merge to save itself. After that fell through, the trustees has little choice: They were going to be going head-to-head with a huge railroad with full government support.

	- Paul

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