"Parent Company"

[NW Mailing List]

Not familiar with Saunders' book, but am with Loving's.  

Loving has produced a pretty good 70's through 90's biography of Jim McClellan, who was my boss at USRA during the '70's and remains a good friend.  There was a great deal of anti-N&W bias at USRA; I can't say where it began, but several of the USRA planners including McClellan were not warm toward N&W.  McClellan wound up at Southern after USRA and was joined there by some other "not warm toward N&W" folks, and played a prominent role at NS until his retirement.  

So when you read Loving, you might want to go easy on some of the historical relationships; the way things worked were filtered through Jim, and might reflect a different point of view than you expect.  Loving is not really kind to N&W and is even less so to Saunders, IMHO.

I have long thought that if USRA had had a different attitude toward N&W and Jack Fishwick and had entered into discussions with them differently than they did, that Conrail might have been quite different from what it was.  Whether it would have been better, I don't know.  Conrail did pretty well, considering everything, during its short life.

EdKing
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: NW Mailing List 
  To: nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org 
  Sent: Tuesday, October 09, 2007 10:04 PM
  Subject: Re: "Parent Company"


  Jim,

  I am familiar with Loving's book, but can you tell me about Saunders'?

  Chuck Stewart
  Bahama

  In a message dated 10/9/2007 9:53:24 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org writes:
    think this discussion would be a whole lot better informed after reading 
    Saunders' Merging ines and Main Lines, and Loving's The Man who Loved 
    Trains.

    Cheers,
    Jim Guthrie 







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