Rise and Fall of the Pennsylvania Railroad

Id rather have a Sister working in a Whore House, than a brother working for The Pennsylvania Railroad

They also are the reason why SEPTA exist.

The Pennsylvania railroad in its peak owned water rights in the Altoona area, the President of the Pennsylvania Railroad said the railroad was going to employee all the family’s in the Altoona area that were able to work, so what the railroad did was stoped any and all growth in Altoona by refusing to sell weather rights to other companies that wanted to
relocate to Altoona like copper tire Westinghouse etc…..so after the railroad got up and wiped it feet on Altoona there has been NO growth in Altoona a lot of the same buildings that stood back in the day are still standing, the town is it’s own time capsule, the Northfolk souther has dominated since taking over the town of Altoona caters to the railroad to this day, Altoona is a shadow of its self and loosing population daily because of no good paying jobs, it’s a town full of retail and restaurants that pay low wages, the only people who stay in Altoona are those who worked for the Pennsylvania railroad, Penn State wanted to put the main campus in Altoona but the Pennsylvania railroad pushed the college out and now resided in state college, Altoona is an extremely depressed area with No Hope of ever being what it once was There’s a highway that runs through Altoona from the turnpike to interstate 80 and people are using the highway to move out of Altoona the only thing that a good thing about Altoona it’s a low cost of living, but the youth of the area are graduating and walking out of Altoona, it’s a town that’s very very closed minded, there is no good entertainment in the town it’s a town who still to this day centers itself around the dead railroad, and now the towns political leaders are keeping growth away from the town, Altoona is like the Titanic above ground people come and visit and then go back to where they are from that offers much more possibilities as they shake their heads in disbelief, the town is still hoping for the Pennsylvania railroad to save it…..

Ayee I grew up in Duncansville and Altoona, currently in Huntingdon. If anyone is really really bored I have some aerial videos of the curve and trains from my rc fpv airplanes onboard GoPro lol. Cool to hear our towns here.

Yoooo Duncansville mentioned !

I always thought "Mackinaw" was a term for my Winter dress Blues at Valley Forge Military Academy, never knew it was a US town.... the more you know!!!

Its really the rise and fall of an entire industry - passenger rail. The PRR should have seen the writing on the wall after WWII when the automobile turned up on every driveway and the Interstate Highways were being built. People abandoned rail travel for the road and never came back The major aggravating factor for the PRR and other Northeastern railroads was the decline of coal as a fuel. All of the coal mined in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and others were hauled to North Eastern cities by the PRR and others. A lot of their freight business dried up along with passenger traffic.
Conrail is an interesting story itself as it was a public corporation created by the government to keep railroad freight service operating for vital commerce and national security reasons. It turned out to be profitable while the other entity, Amtrak has not been (with the exception of the NE Corridor).

The rail was also used to transport bovine semen for artificial insemination. Here we get the common term "running a train on them hoes" so beloved even today.

I hate when they shutdown the Pennsylvania railroad and the new York Central system and emerging the PRR and NYC into Penn Central system railroad why not just keep the Pennsylvania railroad and the new York Central system in operational both of them even the three of steam locomotives from the Pennsylvania railroad system the 5550 T1 and the 1361 K4 and finally the final steam locomotive of the Pennsylvania railroad B6 1670 is getting restored so yeah the three steam locomotive of the Pennsylvania railroad the 5550 T1 and 1361 K4 and B6 0-6-0 switcher three of steam locomotive of the Pennsylvania railroad system are in restoration so yeah that about it so bye

What's with the old stripper hairdo?!?

Less rise and fall and more transactional info dump.

There's a bunch of former PRR locomotives at Medina NY, that serve a bunch of novelty runs, like Xmas Polar Express kids' runs and Thomas the Tank Engine.

My Father in law’s dad was the Chief Paymaster of the PRR in the 1930’s and 40’s era.

He passed away long before it became the PennCentless

JUST found your channel, already love it. Thank you for the in depth focus of American history and heritage.

subsideraries

the NCY may of have carryed 75% of the Prr trafic but it had 50% less track 50% less workers and was lean and mean

the PRR did their down fall to then self's the PRR was very mean and nasty to ever one and every rail road company, it could have been save in 1946 as late as 1952

Awesome video,I was born and raised in Lewistown and always love to learn any Pennsylvania history. Keep up the great work 😎

A truley unique video was captured on the pennsy in southern ohio. Shot at the very last days before the conrail transfer, the engineer brought his home movie camara aboard the E he was driving from Columbus to Cincinnati and back over what is now mostly hike/bike trail.

I hear electric transportation is making a comeback of sorts. LOL. Instead of tracks, it's got remote control.

From what I understand, the NY Central tried building a line across southern Pennsylvania which was later abandoned and then became the Pennsylvania Turnpike, also known as the Penna Pike. I believe that was the world’s first paved toll road.

Other big factors in the decline of northeastern railroads were the decline of coal mining operations, and specifically after-effects of Hurricane Agnes in 1972. This wiped out a ton of PC’s branch line trackage all at once!

At the end you missed some of the biggest legacy of the Pennsylvania railroad. Penn Stations in NYC, Newark and Pittsburgh

its a fack the the nyc & pennsy hated each other the hate was from the top management to the lowest worker.

You missed the best part of the post Staggers track sell off. After acquiring the GM&O less than a decade earlier, by the end of the track sell off, they had divested all of the GMO track acquired in the merger. At one point the entire railroad was for sale on a branch by branch basis, at which point the railroad was so efficient, it was a key aspect of CNs interest. Not coincidentally it was Hunter Harrison s pioneering precision schedule railroading that made Illinois Central what it was at the time of sale.

Very interesting and informative. I've been a fan of trains and railroads from a very young age, and am fortunate enough to reside in Pennsylvania where there is still visible evidence of the PRR's impact. I'm also working on a model railroad layout which will incorporate Pennsy locomotives and rolling stock.

PRR HERITAGE UNIT

For an in-depth examination of the Pennsy and Central merger, read "The Wreck of thecOenn Central." This book chronicles how not to run a company and how not to perform mergers in detail.

And then the US lost its mind, destroyed its rail transportation to choke on car traffic and bankrupted its cities with the suburban sprawl Ponzi scheme.

Very informative great video

1st steam locomotive built in York, Pennsylvania 1825. Richest man and founding father of York, Pennsylvania Leonard Baumgardner 1755 1839 Hessian traitor born in Prussia who only took orders directly from George Washington.

1st Privately owned company to have computer.

No mention of air travel!! How do you do a story about the rails without that??

A hidden gold mine for PRR history lies in Kokomo, Indiana. Here, PCC&ST.L, the Cloverleaf, and the LE&W crisscrossed several times within a 5 mile radius to service large coal, steel, manufacturing and automotive industries. Quite a lot of manual interlocking signals, platforms and foundations remain on the ROW from over 100 years ago. All that is left is the PRR turned Conrail line between Kokomo and Logansport, and the Cloverleaf east, connected to Marion, IN via the old C&O Miami subdivision.

Very interesting piece. I learned many things I did not know. Photo of the RBBB circus train toward the end peaked my sense of nostalgia. I waited 5 hours to see and photograph the final circus train on its trip back to Florida to be dismantled and sold off. Unfortunately this was merely a hodgepodge of cars from both red & blue shows, as the performers and crews that made up an intact train had all been released.

Jimmy Carter was the driving force for deregulation of the railroads (Staggers Act) is what saved US fright railroads from financial ruin.

My Great Grandfather and Grandfather were both enginers for the PRR. Mosstly frieght from the stories my Grandfarher told me. He had a huge model RR and most of his collection was PRR. This was a great video

Thanks for the fantastic history lesson... I now know the stress my dad went through when I was growing up. He worked for PRR/PC/Conrail, almost his entire life. Started as a messenger boy, he was 15 in NYC with the PRR in 1944 and retired from Conrail 48 years later.

When i was 5,the GG-1 was on the point leaving New Jersey with me and my mother headed for Florida. That train today is Amtrak 81 the Silver Star.

I worked for two Philly companies that had their own 800 to 1,000 sidings that saw a lot of traffic until early 1970's. First was a large slaughter house that had the worlds largest cattle cars. They would travel from Chicago to Philly twice a week. When cattle got to Frankford Junction maybe two miles away they would call the com po any up to have somebody to unload the cattle. POS railroad sometimes took halve a hour and sometimes 12 hours. Company had to pay a worker double time every Sunday that he spent twice as much time waiting to unload cattle cars. They would send out a box car of crackling ( ground up & cooked bones ,fat & meat scrapes ) to a chicken farm 700 miles away. It sometimes took lazy railroad a month to finally return a empty box car. When the called up to find if car was close was some times 800 miles further then the chicken farm. Second company had same problem with horrible delivery dates & times. Several times they dropped off a tanker of corn syrup at midnight and by the time guy tried to pump it out next morning during cold weather it would be frozen. While in Boy scouts one summer around 1963 tried to take the train home from Wildwood to Philly. Train only ran two days a week. Think it was on Monday & Thursday. Let me think a shore resort is busiest during summer weekends so you would think they would have passenger train running busiest days of the week.

Folks lament why there are no running / restored GG-1's. Reason? Asbestos wiring and PCB's in the internal electrical components. There wud only be a cosmetic display of the a shell in a museum.

I lived in Johnstown for more than 5 years at the turn of the century and learned from locals what happened to the Pennsylvania Rail Road. Basically, the New York line bought out the Pennsy and ran it into the ground. Locals said they did it for spite because the Pennsy had always been a better railroad, they just wanted to kill it.

Wonderful documentary. I love the Pennsy.

I worked for Conrail from 1979-1984; there was some tension between different freight crews, at times - the Reading guys vs the Penn Central guys vs the Erie Lackawanna guys, etc

At one point, there were 5 on a freight crew: engineer, fireman, conductor and two brakemen. This was reduced to three, and in some cases, two people. The Class I Railroads with their longer, heavier trains and Precision Scheduled Railroading want to just have an engineer on a train and send a conductor out in the case of hot boxes or detached air hoses, etc. More and more is being demanded of railroad workers

This is a world wide RR it ran threw St Thomas Ontario I miss it too thank you for the doc

I truly wonder by what metric the claim is made that it was the largest company in the world. Is this measured by revenue or by assets or by market capitalization? Believe me, / 1890 and certainly 1900 John D. Rockefeller standard oil was absolutely mammoth. And I can't believe the railroad was even bigger. When US steel was created, it was unquestionably. The largest by market capitalization, let alone assets.