Talk:Conrail

Ann Arbor Railroad
Needs more details of the Ann Arbor Railroad --SPUI (talk) 07:11, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Final system plan notes
See also User:SPUI/Amtrak lines acquired from Conrail

Railroads offered lines

 * Amtrak
 * Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad
 * Boston and Maine Railroad
 * Burlington Northern Railroad
 * Central Vermont Railway
 * Chessie System
 * Chicago and North Western Railway
 * Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad
 * Delaware and Hudson Railway
 * Detroit and Mackinac Railway
 * Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railroad
 * Grand Trunk Western Railroad
 * Illinois Central Gulf Railroad
 * State of Indiana
 * Louisville and Nashville Railroad
 * Commonwealth of Massachusetts
 * State of Michigan
 * State of New Jersey and New Jersey Department of Transportation
 * State of New York
 * Norfolk and Western Railway
 * Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Department of Transportation
 * Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad
 * Providence and Worcester Railroad
 * State of Rhode Island and Rhode Island Department of Transportation
 * Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority
 * Southern Railway
 * Toledo, Peoria and Western Railway
 * Union Railroad
 * Western Maryland Railway

Need to split Conrail from Conrail Shared Assets
For clarity's sake, the two need to be kept distinct, as the infobox (for one thing) is grossly inaccurate in describing what most people think of as Conrail. Mangoe 23:11, 13 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree RR325 (talk) 16:50, 12 November 2014 (UTC)RR325

TWP importance assessment
Okay, I'll concede that Conrail was basically THE railroad in the US northeast in the late 20th century. My rule of thumb in assigning importance ratings so far has been that former Class I railroads should generally be listed as Mid importance because we're looking at articles in relation to their importance to rail transport history worldwide. Someone trying to learn the history of American railroading in the 20th century definitely needs to know about Conrail, but I don't think it necessarily holds true for a worldwide view of railroad history. Seeing the rating assigned by an anonymous IP first, my first thought was that the anon user may not have had the Trains WikiProject importance scale in mind, so I deferred to the rating strategy that I've been using so far.

That said, now that another user has stated his agreement with the High importance rating, I'm having a hard time finding an argument against leaving this article with a High importance rating.

Now, there are about 6,000 other articles (and that's not an exaggeration, I counted them yesterday) in to look at... B-) Slambo (Speak)  19:05, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks, that anon user was actually me. One of my computers has trouble keeping me logged in. Thanks for aggreeing with my rational. 3D jonny 19:56, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

I'd assess this as "High" too. The bankruptcy of Penn Central and all the other Northeast US railroads is *the* event in 20th Century railroad history. The transfer of commuter service and commuter track, as well as Northeast Corridor track to public ownership, followed by the revival of freight profitability, are the key factors in the late-20th-century reorganization of American railroads. And the histories of these events are covered almost entirely in the Conrail article. (Separate articles for the 3Rs and 4Rs Acts, the purchases by the commuter systems, and the transfers to Amtrak, would be nice, but would be too detailed for general use.) Just for Future Reference. :-) 69.202.76.231 (talk) 02:29, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

Removal of neutrality dispute label?
I'm not seeing a dispute here in the talk pages. Is the neutrality of the article still being questioned? ```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by Alloy (talk • contribs) 01:10, 31 May 2008 (UTC) Not sure why typing four tildes is not signing this post. Alloy (talk) 01:16, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
 * agreed a section neutrality tag is here as of 2012, seems unjustified to me also, and i'm removing it 208.100.189.155 (talk) 06:46, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

The Conrail Mercury
Conrail Mercury redirects to this article, and it's linked from the Mercury (disambiguation) page. Can someone add some text to this article that describes what the Conrail Mercury is/was, or can we delete the redirect? Thanks. -- JHunterJ (talk) 12:49, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Map issues
The map on the article has a severe issue. It's obviously missing the Southern Tier Line, the former main line of the Erie Lackawanna. Seems like an egregious oversight to me. Alas, I have no way to fix it myself, else I would, but I felt it must be mentioned. oknazevad (talk) 04:11, 12 November 2009 (UTC)
 * The map is also missing the Delmarva Secondary and the Indian River Secondary on the Delmarva Peninsula.  Dough 48  72  01:54, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Signals
What are "tri-light" signals? Are they the same as vertical color light signals? Most of the old EL signal photos I've seen are searchlights; I've seen one or two with vertical color lights. Caseyjonz (talk) 17:31, 21 November 2010 (UTC)
 * They are different, here is a picture
 * http://history.gsmrrclub.org/history5.html
 * RR325 (talk) 16:54, 12 November 2014 (UTC)RR325

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was move per request.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:10, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Consolidated Rail Corporation → Conrail – Should be moved as "Conrail" is the subject's common name, and is the name that appears in the organization's logo. Similarly, Amtrak is the common name for the National Passenger Rail Corporation. – Dream out loud (talk) 18:40, 16 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Support per common name. 65.94.47.63 (talk) 04:05, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Support Conrail would be more recognizable to the average commuter. Marcus   Qwertyus   20:23, 17 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Article unclear: is Conrail a defunct or not a defunct entity?
My comment may be a reiteration of Need to split Conrail from Conrail Shared Assets, above.

The first sentence of this article says Conrail was a railroad. The inset says Conrail ceased operation in 1999, and that it has successors. All that tells me Conrail is a defunct entity.

Then, without explanation, that fact is undone.

First of all, the second paragraph begins The old company remains a ... That wording is unacceptable. This is an encyclopedia article. You begin every paragraph by naming the entity you will discuss in that paragraph. Besides, the paragraph before it, the first paragraph, named many entities, some of them defunct too. Hence, what entity does The old company denote? The same remark goes for the inset, which says:

Successor: CSX, NS (company still exists as a jointly owned terminal/switching railroad)

Your word company here has no referent. It is ambiguous. For me it denotes NS. If you do not mean to denote NS, then state the company's name. In addition, nix the abbreviated grammar, including that mid-20th-century, amateur, sub-English, colloquial cop-out, the slash (/). What part of speech is slash? Whatever English word you mean by it, state that word. Hence (assuming that by company you mean Conrail), the item should read something like:

''Successor: CSX and NS. (Conrail still exists as a jointly owned terminal and switching railroad.)''

Second, the article states on the one hand that Conrail was an old company, that its operations ended in 1999, etc., all the while stating that it is a railroad, that it still exists, and the like. It's all contradictory and inconsistent.

This article is typical of many Wikipedia efforts: In fact it's excellently written, and has a ton of information, but the definition and scope of the topic are not clearly stated.

So, the intro and inset need revamping.

I don't know if all of this is subsumed by the aforementioned comment. (If that comment is suggesting that this article be split into the defunct and extant incarnations of Conrail, that would indeed solve everything.)

Also, in the inset, the caption of the map is unacceptable. It doesn't state the map's date. Does it illustrate Conrail's system, say, in 1999, at the time it ceased operation? In 1976, when it started operation? During some other year in which the system reached its maximum extent? Or does it show the system today, as operated by Conrail's successors?

--Jim Luedke Jimlue (talk) 19:05, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I placed up one of those ugly tags on the history, because I doubt that a University of Chicago Press account of why US railroads were in trouble in the early 1970s is unbiased. (It's all the workers or "high labor costs" for instance.) Does someone more knowledgeable than me know another source which presents a more mainstream view? I these situations articles should read something like, "one account of the difficulty was.... another view said..." etc. Thanks.  Wik idea  16:42, 8 July 2012 (UTC)

Wikidea, while I get your point about the distinction between workers and "high labor costs" (or think I do), I am not sure why you think that University of Chicago Press would not produce an unbiased account, or that the account would not be "mainstream." Kimwell (talk) 18:46, 5 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Umm... perhaps you should focus on the author rather than the publisher. If you happened to look at this so-called "University of Chicago Press account" reference, which can be previewed on Google books, you would learn that the author was John F. Stover (d. 2007), a Professor Emeritus of History at Purdue University. He taught at Purdue for 31 years and wrote a number of books on railroad history. He was not an economist, nor was he affiliated with the Chicago school of economics. The U. Chicago Press happened to be the publisher for this particular book, which is a general survey of U.S. railroad history. Stover's other books were published by a variety of university presses including Purdue, Oxford, and Columbia. Caseyjonz (talk) 05:39, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

2 separate articles for Conrail railway and Conrail company
This article should be called Conrail (railroad) and the company be called Conrail (company). In the current article you put a link to the new article that explains about the company that operates conrail shared assets operations and that the company is owned by ns and CSX.

I see my vision of these articles as


 * Conrail (company) is a company that is owned by both CSX which operates CSXT and by NS which operates the NS Railway. Conrail (company) use to operate a railroad by the same name which is now part of both CSXT and NS Railway which in turn those railroads are owned by either CSX or NS, the company's owners. Conrail (company) now operates a switching railway called Conrail Shared Assets Operations which serves as a local switch carrier for both NS Railway and CSXT the company's owners' railroads.

I always thought that conrail shared assets operations as a small railroad that serves as a carrier between NS railway and CSXT which is operated by conrail (company) which in turn is owned by NS and CSX which both owners operate the railroads that conrail shared assets operations serves as a local carrier between.

Rail companies have their own article and their railroads have a separate article so why can't conrail have 2 separate articles for the company and it's former railroad. 71.188.58.225 (talk) 01:49, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Conrail existing beyond the years given for its life?
In all the reportage of the time, 2012, the railroad involved in the Paulsboro, NJ derailment is indicated as involving a train run by Conrail. Yet, this article states that Conrail was finished in 2012. Please assist in resolving this discrepancy.Dogru144 (talk) 02:37, 25 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I think you're looking for Conrail Shared Assets Operations. Mackensen (talk) 03:31, 25 February 2023 (UTC)