[PRCo] Understanding History

[Fred Schneider]

The recent thread on maintenance standards brings to mind a colleague  
of mine ... an acquaintance ... perhaps I might even call him a friend.

The man is retired Professor James N. G. Henwood from East  
Stroudsburg State University.   Jim taught history and loved  
teaching.   The kids seemed to love him too.   I got that feeling  
when I went to see him at his family home in Philadelphia when he was  
recovering from cancer.   He had been subjected to the amputation of  
a leg to remove the cancer, and when I got there the living room was  
filled with 20-somethings who had driven 100-odd miles from East  
Stroudsburg just to see their professor.   That was one hell of a  
tribute.

I got to know him when I was co-editing Headlights magazine, and even  
more closely when I had a contract with Interurbans Press to do the  
layout and pastup for the Henwood - Muncy book on the Laurel Line.

One of the most important things that Jim taught me and which he  
tried to teach his students was to never believe everything you see  
in print.   Nothing pleased Jim more than when a student would  
approach him saying, "You said thus and so, the text book reads blah,  
blah, blah, and this other author says something entirely  
different."   That would give Jim the chance to ask, which do you  
believe is correct and why?

Just because Fred Schneider or Ed Lybarger or Steve Carlson wrote  
something 30 years ago in a book does not make either one of us a  
God.   We worked with what we believed was the best available  
information at the time.   That information may not have been correct.

But there might have been an even worse flaw ...

One need not wait for the last survivor of World War II to die to  
write the definitive history of the war so that no one living can  
say, "I was there and you are wrong."

It is sometimes a lot better if the person is still living and can be  
told he is wrong.   One of the most memorable experiences in my life  
happened on a guided tour through Auschwitz kz camp in Poland, when a  
person in our group politely told the guide that she was full of  
shit.   She asked him what made him such an expert.   The little  
Jewish man very quitely answered, "I was here.   The American's  
released me in 1945."   You were not even born yet."   The guide  
pretty much disappeared into the background at that point and he told  
us what a Nazi concentration camp was all about.   She listened.

And perhaps what he had to say was distorted too.

But authors work with what we have, we do the best we can, and all of  
us make mistakes.

The information on PCCs on eastern European systems was sketchy at  
best when we did the PCC books.   We worked with what we had.   We  
had the minute books and chief engineers reports of the ERPCC but we  
could not go back and ask questions of Hirshfeld and Conway because  
they were dead.   On the other hand, Kashin knew Conway but never saw  
the minute books and chief engineers reports so he didn't think to  
formulate the questions I had in my mind.   We were all working blind  
years after the fact.   Ed was talking to Bob Brown about rebuilding  
an 800 and Bob was telling Ed one thing and telling me something  
totally different.   I've since wondered if perhaps Dan Durie might  
have told Bob what he wanted to hear just to get Bob out of his  
office!   Afterall, Durie had a railroad to run and that was more  
important than dealing with railfans.

What Ed brings to the table is a profound knowledge as a businessman  
and investor.   He knows how to make money.   He understands how  
railways made money.   He knows what made sense and what didn't make  
sense.   He too has learned to sometimes "distrust the obvious."    
The key point he made was West Penn wrote their assets down to scrap  
value in 1948 which tends to indicate that they were not going to  
capitalize a rebuilding project and increase the value of the asset  
base.

But they did spend some money in order to keep people on the  
payroll.   They did maintain track until the end, perhaps to keep the  
crews busy, perhaps because they would have had to pay them a pension  
anyway, perhaps because the company would suffer bad press and  
liability costs in the event of an accident.   Dave Hamley has told  
me he has seen track crews changing out ties right up until the end  
of service.   But the paint shop wasn't busy.   And they didn't waste  
any money overhauling cars ... remember, they had plenty of surplus  
700s after 1950 because of the abandonment of the three Brownsville,  
Martin, Fairchance, Phillips and Dickerson Run lines.    (That would  
be cars 703, 704, 705, 706, 707, 708, 715, and I think 716