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2) The New Haven Line from Woodlawn Junction to State
Street, New Haven, Connecticut. This was done to
prevent Amtrak from buying the line and making the new
agency a tennant. This would have been a nightmare.
3) Parts of Grand Central Terminal. I believe there
were some forced acquisitions of parts of the
Terminal, to do with it's historical building status.
The foundations of the Metro-North, and sequence of
events which led to it's creation are briefly
explained in this page. |
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was the best idea when it's
joint agreement with Conrail was terminated. Conrail had been wanting to unload all it's operations
in the Northeast, and, two years previously, in 1981,
the Houses of Congress in Washington passed The Northeastern
Railroad Transportation Act, which gave them the clearance to do
just that. |
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Conrail came on the scene in
1976, when the then
bankrupt Pennsylvania Central Transportation Company
(Penn Central) was merged with three other railroads
into Conrail. Conrail then leased most of the
Right-Of-Way from Penn Cenrtrals private sucessor,
American Premier Underwriters Inc. This deal continues
today, with the exceptions listed above.
Before that, The Penn Central owned all of the rail
covered in the scope of this site. Although the Penn
Central was opering until 1976, it had filed for
bankruptcy in 1970, between which times it was
bankrupt, but allowed/forced to continue to operate
the rail service under bankruptcy protection.
The Penn
Central was in bad shape from the beginning.
It started trading in 1968 with no money in it's bank
account. The Penn Central was weak and fundamentally
flawed because it, as a merger between the New York
Central and the Pennsylvania Railroad (or at least,
that was the plan), was basically a merger of two
railroads that did not have a bright future and were
both in their final years. Also the operating rules
which the new railroad observed were those of the
Pennsylvania RR, which some had described as "The
worst in the industry".
To make matters worse, the Penn Centrals operations
were largely passenger services, which were in decline
and losing money, but which were mandated by the
government and as such, could not be terminated/scaled
back, or have fares increased without the approval of
the Interstate Commerce Commission, which was
painfully slow and bureaucratic at approving such
measures. The orginal plan for Penn Central was just
for the operations of the New York Central and the
Pennsylvania RR, but another railroad, The New York,
New Haven and Hartford Railroad (known simply as the
New Haven Railroad), had actually gone bankrupt during
this time. It had a vast (and quickly money losing)
passenger operation which the Penn Central was forced
to absorb in it's merger, even though it wanted
nothing to do with such a large passenger business.
Before the merger of the Penn Central, The New York
Central and the New Haven Railroad owned ALL of the
trackage covered by this site.
Specifically the New Haven Railroad owned:
1) The trackage which is now the New Haven Line
2) The Beacon line, then called the Maybrook
Branch While the New York Central owned:
- The Harlem Line
- The Hudson Line
- Grand Central Mott Haven
Jct.
Before Penn Central, the lines
in question had very different histories and circumstances.
Therefore they fall outside the scope of a 'General History'
page. To trace the histories of a particular line further back
in time, please consult that lines history page. |
