Talk:Pennsylvania Railroad

Redirect missing from Pennsylvania Railroad Company
There is a second redirect to the article other than the one listed. It is from the Pennsylvania Railroad Company. I fixed the language to reflect this... but all these various Pennsylvania articles need to be cleaned up... or integrated... a lot of good work but tough to slog through some of it... Cheers to everyone... Risk Engineer (talk) 16:52, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

People?
There is so little about the people who worked for the railroad; some were obviously in technically skilled jobs, others were not, but it provided a good living to hundreds of thousands of people. In the 1910s-20s the PA RR recruited 12,000 African Americans from the South, all but 2,000 from Florida and GA. So 10,000 men went North to new jobs and cities, learned new work and became part of a huge enterprise. That was a big change for many people, but they all contributed to the success of the railroad and should get more recognition.--Parkwells (talk) 16:20, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree that it would be a good section to incorporate into the article. However, it's hard to find information that deals with the subject. Ordinarily, it's the information about the structures, locomotives, etc. that is the most readily available. Shinerunner (talk) 21:35, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

This info might be available from the Railroaders' Memorial Museum in Altoona. - J.D. Gallaway - The A&amp;A Archives (talk) 22:16, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Main Line early history
The "Main Line" history paragraph seems to confuse the relationship between the Main Line of Public Works (MLPW) and PRR. MLPW had a complete water-and-rail route across the state by 1834. PRR was not there to "complete" MLPW. Philadelphia business interests were concerned that the B&O's proposed all-rail route to Pittsburgh would divert traffic to Baltimore's port. Moreover, the Board of Canal Commissioners tried to compete with the PRR by constructing the New Portage Railroad between Hollidaysburg and Johnstown, in order to bypass the cumbersome inclined planes.

Is there a consensus that this paragraph needs to be rewritten? If so, I am willing to take a crack at it. The first "Triumph" book by Charles Roberts is a good source for this era. Atomsmith (talk) 04:33, 17 September 2008 (UTC)


 * A tad late, but I agree. The “main line” terminology seems to be the culprit. I attempted a fix.Grahamboat (talk) 20:44, 13 March 2012 (UTC)

Steam locomotives
It should be noted that the PRR's reliance on steam locomotives in the mid 20th century was a factor contributing to its downfall.

This is a statement of opinion, given as fact. While the two following lines offer evidence to support this conclusion, the PennCentral collapse is a far more complex issue than this statement would lead readers to believe.

To make my point, I offer the following as opposing "evidence": Both Chesapeake & Ohio as well as Norfolk & Western railways were two of the last, (N&W being the last major railroad) to dieselize. In fact N&W was buying up engines as other roads were retiring them, in addition to building new units in their Roanoke shops. Norfolk & Western is universally recognized as the last major railroad to switch from steam to diesel traction in the United States. It is also held as a common belief that the major reason for the N&W changeover was A) a change in management at the very top... new CEO was selected, only a couple weeks later the first diesels arrived on property, and only a couple years later the entire system was steam-free. B) That the N&W engineering officers recognized that as the sole remaining bastion of steam, they would no longer be able to purchase key components from manufacturers... tubes, flues, large castings, feed water heaters, boosters, lubricators, etc would no longer be available for purchase if the railroad chose to continue steam locomotive construction.

The reason that the N&W case argues against the initial statement is that despite continuing to buy and build new steam engines even after PRR was dieselized, N&W went on to merge with Southern to form the Norfolk Southern mega-road, one of the "Big Four" remaining freight carriers in the US.

I highly suggest that someone remove such an inflammatory and debatablely inaccurate statement.

- J.D. Gallaway - FCCorp.US (talk) 22:32, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Electrification, electric locomotives, and MU cars
I'm going to be incorporating a fair bit more detail into these topics, using some of the books and references I've got available. Any questions or concerns, please address them here, or on my personal talk page (as opposed to trying to edit war on the article itself). Thanks! Hiroe (talk) 18:44, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

The first draft of the MU paragraph needed extensive revision so I have put in a new version with an authoritative reference. Some of your numbers were familiar, but I had never seen 524 before. The e-class information is no longer there, but a more complete version can be included from the reference if desirable. MagnaGraecia, 20 August 2011

Copyright problem removed
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Additional Copyright problem
It appears as though at least 2 whole paragraphs under "major routes" are stolen from this guy's book: https://books.google.com/books?id=hrAXBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA122&lpg=PA122&dq=%22Pennsylvania+Air+Line%22+railroad+washington+dc&source=bl&ots=_lJQK4lp_C&sig=ACfU3U0olsnExE6Sj6y3hrIpAFq8Piefnw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjplMODy-PpAhWGnOAKHQyGARwQ6AEwDXoECBwQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Pennsylvania%20Air%20Line%22%20railroad%20washington%20dc&f=false — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ejc.historian (talk • contribs) 16:54, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 4 external links on Pennsylvania Railroad. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.prrths.com/PRR_Signals.html
 * Corrected formatting/usage for http://www.gaugemag.parkdaleyard.com/history.html
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110110142818/http://southernspaces.org/2007/countryside-transformed-eastern-shore-virginia-pennsylvania-railroad-and-creation-modern-landsc to http://southernspaces.org/2007/countryside-transformed-eastern-shore-virginia-pennsylvania-railroad-and-creation-modern-landsc
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20050226053444/http://www.rpi.edu/about/hof/cassatt.html to http://www.rpi.edu/about/hof/cassatt.html

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Penn Station Photo
Since the station was demolished in 1963, that photo cannot be of Penn Station - look at the cars. Does anyone have a photo of Penn Station ? 116.231.75.71 (talk)
 * What? Which image? Steve Lux, Jr. (talk) 14:33, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
 * There's a 2005 photo of NY Penn Station in the body of the article--that's long after PRR disappeared. The photo shows the entrance to the extant underground station, which is used by Amtrak, NJ Transit and LIRR. Since this article is about the PRR, rather than its successors, a photo of the original station (pre-1963) would be more appropriate here. I'll find a replacement photo for this spot. (In the Gallery section there is a 1911 photo of the original station.) Caseyjonz (talk) 03:02, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Missing attribution?
At the start of the article, these lines makes some bold claims -- and the links provided do not back them up.

"At one time, the PRR was the largest publicly traded corporation in the world, with a budget larger than that of the U.S. government and a workforce of about 250,000 people.[3] The corporation still holds the record for the longest continuous dividend history: it paid out annual dividends to shareholders for more than 100 consecutive years.[4]"

I tried to confirm by checking Philadelphia: a 300 year history and the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, and found nothing to support that PRR was the largest public company in the world, that it's budget was larger than the US government's or that it had a workforce of a quarter million people, or that it paid out dividends longer than other companies. Googling those claims only provides a link to Wikipedia.
 * Ok I got this info from the standard scholarly history of the PRR and added it in: ''By 1882 it had become the largest railroad, the largest transportation enterprise, and the largest corporation in the world. With 30,000 miles of track, it had longer mileage than any other country in the world, except Britain and France. Its budget was second only to the U.S. government.   Rjensen (talk) 00:04, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Penna Rail Road
Is the Penna Rail Road the same as the Pennsylvania Railroad, should the article not explain the connection if any? If its an alternative name it should be referenced. Commons has around 500 images referencing Penna. Broichmore (talk) 10:52, 6 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I searched the Commons and came to the conclusion that Penna Rail Road is the same as the Pennsylvania Railroad. Actually, the name is Penna. Rail Road where Penna. is short for Pennsylvania. It is my opinion that there is no need to reference Penna. RobWar17 (talk) 00:50, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Empire Transportation Company
The Pennsylvania Railroad's wiki page does not include any information about an early subsidiary with important historical threads, the Empire Transportation Company. The Empire Transportation Company was a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad founded and administered by Joseph D. Potts. It owned oil tanker cars and used them to transport refined oil for mostly independent oil refiners during the era of John D. Rockefeller's and Standard Oil's oil refinery mergers of the 1870s. The company also owned grain freight boats on the great lakes and oil pipelines. When the company attempted to buy some oil refineries in 1877, Standard Oil bought the company. Smellyshirt5 (talk) 01:58, 3 November 2018 (UTC)
 * So long as you have verifiable sources for this, then please add this to the article. If not, then please refer to WP:BRD. - Morphenniel (talk) 02:13, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Added it as a subsection in the "History" section with citations.Smellyshirt5 (talk) 16:48, 3 November 2018 (UTC)

Let's clarify "PRR track mileage"
In the intro, the amount of track operated by PRR is given as 10,515 ("end of 1925") and 30,000 (no date given; follows a sentence about 1882). A note is rather confusing: "Not including LIRR, WJ&S and several smaller subsidiaries. PRR track-miles in 1925 totalled 25,752; at the end of 1967, mileages were 9,481 and 21,868". Meanwhile, the infobox says 10,512. Let's work to clarify this. PRRfan (talk) 14:19, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I clarified that note and unified the intro mileage and infobox mileage to a referenceable resource of 1926. Research/reference is needed about the 30,000 miles and country comparison. My assumption is that the amount refers to all tracks - main, 2nd, 3rd, sidings, etc. But, is that the same comparison made to other countries? RobWar17 (talk) 22:51, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
 * I just saw in another section of talk that this comparison is referred but the reference was not added to the content. I will do that.RobWar17 (talk) 22:54, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Legal name and inclusion of 'The' and 'Company'
I come across many instances where a company's legal name includes the word 'The' and 'Company'. In American railroad corporate history, whether referenced from Moody's, Poor's, ICC valuation reports, legislature records, or self-published or commissioned corporate histories, there are many instances where a railroad was reorganized, changed name, consolidated or merged, with the sole difference in corporate name being the addition or removal of 'The'. In similar fashion, the inclusion or removal of 'Company', change to or from 'Railway', 'Rail Way', or 'Rail Road', and the change between '&' to 'and' were all used to make a distinction in name. While all might be subjectively considered subtle differences when compared to the common name reference to a company, these each are a factual reference to include 'The' and 'Company', as applicable, when referring to a railroad's legal name. In this instance, the Pennsy's legal corporate name is "The Pennsylvania Railroad Company".RobWar17 (talk) 15:32, 26 October 2019 (UTC)

replacement for broken digifind-it.com link
Here is the link shown in to article titled "Dayton's Five Corners and the Pennsylvania and Newark Railroad".


 * https://www.digifind-it.com/brunswick/south/data/post/2009/2009-05-28.pdf

Current working link (apparently unrestricted) is:


 * https://www.digifind-it.com/brunswick/south/data/south%20brunswick%20post/2009/2009-05-28.pdf#page=2

The apparently identical article is also available here (without any indication this was published in the South Brunswick Post, but much shorter load time):


 * https://archive.centraljersey.com/2009/05/28/time-travels-daytons-five-corners/

Note: Here is a link to the search page at South Brunswick Public Library: https://www.digifind-it.com/brunswick/south/home.php

Fabrickator (talk) 10:51, 26 July 2020 (UTC)