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RE: (erielack) Special Day? What if?



> The shame in the EL
> merger, other than what it did to a great organization, was 
> that much of
> the DL&W disappeared from the map.

Are you looking at the same railroad atlas that I am? Please tell me, other than the short distance betweeen Totowa-Paterson on the Boonton Line and the redundant duplicate sections between Buffalo-Binghamton, how you come up with the statement that the shame in the EL merger was that "much of the DL&W disappeared from the map?"  Are you referring to Conrail, not EL?

Maybe I'm just jaded by today's business world, but "those are the breaks." Romance doesn't really have a place in business, and though the decisions made were obviously Erie-influenced, the fact remained that two parallel lines were just plain wasteful.

A lot of the lamenting going on here stems from deep-seeded love for a particular railroad, moreso than looking logically at the business ramifications of decisions such as abandonments.

I certainly would have loved to have seen a thriving DL&W and Erie running around today. Then again, how many people could have imagined the once-great AT&T split up and now almost unrecognizable after mergers and "reinventions" of itself? My statements apply to ANY corporation. That's just business.

	- Paul, back to living in my "fantasy railroad world" via modeling :)

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