[PRCo] Re: Generic Description

[Dwight Long]

Ed

I agree that few electric railways were covered by ICC regulation (a few 
interurbans were).  But since the ICC was the orginal regulatory agency, 
many of the state commissions followed its lead in setting up their 
regulatory schemes. Without specifics, I wouldn't know whether a particular 
electric railway set up its accounting in this fashion because a) it wanted 
to, for its own reasons (probably, as you say, to preserve the lendable 
capital base); b) because state regulatory commissions required it; or c) 
they had no clue, and simply followed "steam " railway practice.  As I said, 
the result was the same as to your point.

An interesting example was the Indiana Railroad (the electric line, not the 
current company with that name).  From its establishment until its 1932 
bankruptcy, it did not use depreciation accounting.  This may well have been 
to make the overall capital base of Midland United look healthier, which 
would be consistent with your theory of the case. The bankruptcy judge 
rightfully felt this did not accurately portray the finances and operating 
results of the company, and required the receiver (Bowman Elder) to 
institute depreciation accounting--which of course made the P&L look even 
worse than it had pre-bankruptcy.

Keeping a high capital base for ratemaking purposes was beneficial mostly to 
companies that had a true monopoly on the service they provided, such as the 
provision of electricity or telephone or natural gas service.  They were 
typically governed by classic public utility ratemaking rules, which 
theoretically set their rates at levels to obtain a ROI of a certain 
percentage on that base.  In these situations it was obviously to the 
utility's benefit to keep the capital base as high as possible.  Most 
electric railways, at least by the 1920s, no longer had an effective 
monopoly on the traffic, and so any attempt to use this sort of rate-making 
policy stood about as much chance of success as the proverbial snowball in 
hell.  They were struggling, more likely unsuccessfully, to make ANY profit 
at all, let alone one anywhere near what their cousins in, say, the electric 
power company business, could command in terms of percent on invested 
capital--watered or not.

Dwight

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Edward H. Lybarger" <trams2 at comcast.net>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
Sent: Sunday, May 22, 2011 11:52 AM
Subject: [PRCo] Re: Generic Description


> Dwight is generally correct.  I wasn't citing originality, but 
> application.
> The steam railroads were past masters of financial manipulation,
> particularly insofar as maintaining high valuations for ratemaking 
> purposes.
>
> PRC was cited as early as the first decade of the 20th Century, though, 
> for
> not having depreciation reserves in place.  It was concluded that not 
> doing
> so was bad business practice, and led to failure to purchase needed
> equipment when business did not grow as much as the management had hoped.
> The street railways were not governed by ICC rules but at some point had
> statewide accounting standards invoked.  Don't know if that happened with
> the Railroad Commission or the Public Service Commission.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
> [mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org] On Behalf Of Dwight
> Long
> Sent: Sunday, May 22, 2011 11:27 AM
> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: Generic Description
>
> Ed
>
> I believe, but do not have documentation available here to support it, 
> that
> the reason tramways did not depreciate fixed assets such as track, 
> signals,
> etc., is that their accounting practice was modeled after the "steam"
> railways.  The steam lines had accounting methods which were dictated by 
> the
> Interstate Commerce Commission.  The ICC would not (until fairly recent
> times--maybe a couple of decades ago) permit writeoff of track, etc., nor
> capitalization of repairs or betterments to it.  All had to be shown as
> expense, hence part of the reason for failing to provide normalized
> maintenance when economic times were poor--it made the P&L look better not
> to do it.  "We can always make it up when the economy turns around."
>
> I don't think the accounting method of which you speak was a creation of 
> the
> tramway companies but rather simply the prevailing methodology of the era.
>
> That said, it still produced the results you cite.
>
> Dwight
>
>  ----- Original Message -----
>  From: Edward H. Lybarger
>  To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
>  Sent: Sunday, 22 May, 2011 11:12
>  Subject: [PRCo] Re: Generic Description
>
>
>  The number is 621.33 -- Electric Railways.
>
>  And I'd like to remind that there are other parts of the collection that
> are
>  of equal or greater importance than the photos...those documents which
>  explain how the trolley company was a business and operated accordingly.
> Or
>  how the trolley company encumbered itself with so many liabilities up
> front
>  that it could have never been financially successful.  Think nickel fare,
>  for example...they became very beholden to local government for the
>  franchise grant and the guaranteed nickel fare, but this occurred at a
> time
>  when inflation was non-existent.  Fifteen years later, when it was a big
>  issue, the trolley company was trapped.  Another bit of genius involved
>  never writing off all the capital costs of the horsecar and cable lines
> and
>  then issuing watered securities backed by those "assets."  When they
> needed
>  to raise capital in the early part of the 20th Century, they couldn't,
>  because of tricks like this and because of the lack of earning power.
>
>  No photo library will tell you these things!
>
>  -----Original Message-----
>  From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org
>  [mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementia.org] On Behalf Of Fred
>  Schneider
>  Sent: Friday, May 20, 2011 7:18 PM
>  To: pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org
>  Subject: [PRCo] Re: Generic Description
>
>  Jim:
>
>  I was trying to throw out the complications.
>
>  Ed Lybarger, with his fabulous sense of humor,  explains how complicated
> it
>  can really be by placing a number on the door of the library at PTM. 
> The
>  number on that door is the Dewey Decimal System number for railways.  He
> is
>  telling us that everything in that room is one number in the time honored
>  library cataloging system and by inference that the standard system
> doesn't
>  work at all when you have 10,000 square feet of floor space covered with
>  stuff all meeting the same definition.   (Actually Dewey used 385 and 625
>  and we probably would not know how to split them.    The first was
>  transportation; the second was technology.  Can you visualize the guys
>  arguing over which is which?  He had no separate category for trolleys;
> just
>  railroads, although the on line reference I have only shows the first
> three
>  digits ... railroads and highways all are in 625.  After the decimal we
>  might split it into trolleys.
>
>  Now you have to find a new system and it needs to be a system that works
> not
>  only for the aficionados who collected that crap but for the people who
> know
>  absolutely nothing about it.   The hired educator for the museum who has
> to
>  teach children about trolleys has to be able to find what she wants in 
> the
>  library without becoming discouraged.   The director needs to be able to
> use
>  it to answer a newspaper's query.   The librarian needs to be able to 
> find
>  the pictures we have from Williamsport when someone wants to do a book.
>  Hopefully the library will also be a resource that contains more than 
> just
>  pictures and an occasional engineering drawing; wouldn't it be nice if it
>  also contains financial and business records about the industry?
>
>  I can tell you a lot of the problems but I personally cannot be there 
> much
>  of the time because I live four and a half hours away.  If I were five
> miles
>  away, I would probably be there two days a week but I'm not there.
>
>  The ideal way of archiving collections is to put everything in a standard
>  data base.   Sometimes you simply don't do what you know you should
> because
>  you have so little free time that you must attack those things that were
> not
>  done in any way at all and ignore those that were done.
>
>  For example ... my trolley negatives are there.   They are already in
>  individual glassine envelopes with the negative and the envelope each
>  bearing a file number.   Perhaps it is not the best storage medium but it
> is
>  workable as long as they are all safety film (and all except a handful
> are).
>  All have been numbered from T-1 up to T-3000 something.   There is a 
> loose
>  leaf index that describes each one in numerical order.   There is also a
>  file of photographic proof sheets in order by company, i.e. all of the
>  Pittsburgh negatives were pulled out and proofed and then those 8x10
> proofs
>  are in a Pittsburgh folder.   All the Washington negatives were proofed
> and
>  in a Washington folder.  And so forth.   Now, even if that does not meet
>  your standards, do you mess with it or do you simply leave Fred's filing
>  alone?   Answer, until everything else is done, you probably wisely leave
>  Fred's system alone because you don't have the money to redo it.    You
>  spend precious resources on th!
>   e negatives that are not identified and those that are not in acid free
>  envelopes.   So what do you do with Fred's?   You probably put an FS in
>  front of his number (or something else unique to help you find them) and
>  then copy his file into a data base as simply as possible and scan them
> ...
>  you make it a KISS project because there are too many other projects
>  screaming for help.
>
>  More important might be to take all of the thousands of negatives I
> brought
>  over from the Goldsmith and Watts collections that are mostly on
> non-safety
>  film (highly combustable) and refile them in open sided, acid free
> envelopes
>  and then build a concrete vault away from the main building to house all
> the
>  combustible negatives....  Can you see the need for millions of dollars?
>
>
>  If you are not familiar, remember the words SAFETY FILM on the edge of
> films
>  produced in the 1940s and 1950s?    As long as there were still some 
> older
>  combustable materials produced, the newer cellulose acetate materials 
> were
>  labeled SAFETY FILM.   When we moved from glass plates to flexible
>  materials, the films were made of cellulose sodium nitrate.   It will, if
>  stored in stacks, spontaneously combust.  It needs to breath.  If you get
>  enough of that crap, it will blow the roof off a building.   Theater 
> movie
>  projectors were designed with very sophisticated light baffles so that if
>  the motor quit running, the light would also be shut off to prevent
>  combustion of the film.   My father remembered a major theater fire in
>  Cleveland in the late 1920s.   I've been told that an entire 800 foot, 20
>  minute reel of 35mm film could easily go up in smoke in seconds.   The
>  Hippodrome in Lancaster was gutted in the early 1920s ... same reason.
>  Eventually it became law that projection !
>   booths in theaters had to be surrounded by concrete!
>
>  By the late 1930s we were producing films on cellulose acetate ... but
> some
>  photographers still bought the cheaper stuff.   I know my father still
> found
>  some nitrate base 35mm film right after World War II ... he had that 35mm
>  film rolled up and it basically turned to jello.
>
>  That should give you a clue that a lot of the collections from older
>  railfans are time bombs.
>
>  Those images on sheet films made of cellulose sodium nitrate are largely
>  lost because the thicker the base, the more likely it was to decompose.
> I
>  remember Harold Cox telling me that most of the Philadelphia Rapid 
> Transit
>  archive from the end of the glass era until the beginning of the safety
> film
>  era had virtually vanished because it was professionally done on thick
> sheet
>  film negatives and they simple decomposed to flammable dust!  (Thinner
> roll
>  film negatives were more permanent.)
>
>  So, Jim, do you worry about what Fred did with his collection?   I don 't
>  think so.  It is not done in a fashion which I believe suitable for 
> future
>  users.   I wrote it like a railfan.   The journal reads:  "Company, car
>  number, direction, location, date and any other relevant items we might
>  like.   If I were redoing it today for a new generation of users, I would
>  probably put city, county, state, date right in the first position. 
> But
>  there is a record that someone can work with in a few years when I'm 
> gone.
>
>
>  Fred
>
>  (Only proof read once ... if you don't understand something, ask.)
>
>
>
>  On May 20, 2011, at 4:29 PM, Jim Keener wrote:
>
>  > Sorry for my naivité.  I guess I'm trying to jump into a discussion I
>  > haven't been involved in before and might not know pre-existing
>  > protocols.  I've done databasing and cataloguing of things, but never
>  > really archiving before.  I'm also not familiar with how other museums
>  > arrange their archives.
>  >> 1)   The title that includes company and car number is bad because you
>  might have, in a museum such as ours, a hundred identical titles.
>  >>
>  >> 2)  That description: "West Penn.  FT 3.  Connellsville Shops."  is
>  apparently what Frank put on the slide and it means nothing to the 
> average
>  person.   If you come to the museum from Pocatello, Idaho, what does
>  Connellsville shops mean?   But a descriptor that reads "Company car
> repair
>  facility in Connellsville, PA" might be understandable.   And what does
> that
>  FT 3 indicate.   Be damned if I have a clue.
>  >>
>  >
>  > While not an ideal situation, it's at least something.  For instance,
>  > "West Penn.  FT 3.  Connellsville Shops." doesn't really mean much to
>  > an outsider.  However, someone can come along later and flush it out
>  > later.  Especially if these are all scanned in and in database, it's
>  > trivial to change the captions and keep track of the changes.  Even if
>  > they are captions on paper, it can be changed later, but at least
>  > something is there and initial time can be spent towards ones with
>  > poorer captions (e.g.: company and car number with no location).
>  >> A description should probably start with a file number or archive
> number.
>  Next we probably need to figure out who the user is and what he wants.
>  Does he want to find West Penn Railways?   Or does he want to find
> trolleys
>  from Uniontown, PA?   Or might he be interested in trolleys from Fayette
>  County, Pennsylvania?   Or Southwestern Pennsylvania?   All of these are
>  possible descriptors that we might wish to use to help the user find
>  something.   Remember guys, we're looking at this as rail fanatics.   The
>  ultimate user might not be one of us.   He might simply be a transport
>  historian or a historian in general 50 years from now.  Incorporating the
>  car number into the descriptor might be a minor thing for the user we 
> will
>  be serving.   (I am a railway historian trying to think how someone else
>  might want to use our files when we are not here.   I can look at the
>  declining number of hobbyists in groups like the NRHS or the ERA and
>  understand that we won't be here.)
>  > Will the database be electronic, or do you want a lot of information
>  > on the physical slide and in the record number?  If its electronic a
>  > record Id on the slide might suffice?  Otherwise, the identifier on
>  > the slide could contain encoded information. <map grid> <company> <car
>  > #> <year> <record id>.  The map grid could be designed to flow so that
>  > someone looking through the physical archives wouldn't have to skip
>  > around all too much to view someone geographically close. Lexically
>  > sorting by the order suggested would have the records sorted in a
>  > psuedo-geographic manner and then grouping by company and car.
>  >
>  >> Countless hours?   Again, nothing is impossible for those who are not
>  doing it.     If you have 200,000 photos that need to be captioned and it
>  takes an average of 15 minutes to do a caption, we are talking 24 man
> years.
>  Is that a safe number for the collection.   Might be.   My own collection
> is
>  close to 50,000 prints and I am simply extrapolating from the number of
> file
>  cases.
>  >> I have not hauled the other file cases out to Washington yet.   I 
> might
>  add that PTM also has my albums already and that might include another
> 5,000
>  prints or six months worth of full time data entry.   Did I hear anyone
>  volunteering?
>  >>
>  > I'd be near useless identifying places outside of the city, but I
>  > would be able to scan and/or enter descriptions into a database.
>  > Doubly so if I could take a small deck of slides home each week and do
>  > them at nights and mornings when I have small bits of time to spare,
>  > though I don't have a slide scanner at home.
>  >> Ray, a simple description is fine.   One that reads West Penn 700-type
>  car on the Fairchance line believed to be near Hopwood about 1948 is OK
>  until you refine it.   But it requires historians willing to write such
>  words as "believed"  or "unknown" or "suspected" or "circa" or "about"
> when
>  we do not know for certain.
>  > Is it uncommon for people to mark their captions with uncertainty? Do
>  > they just refuse to write them or write them with certainty?
>  >> Perhaps trolley near Hopwood, Fayette County, Pennsylvania circa 1948
>  might even be better for the future user with the railfan details buried
>  farther down in the description.
>  >>
>  >> Regardless, what is written needs to be correct and there are 
> thousands
>  of pictures and slides which were never captioned.  The guys that
> volunteer
>  simply look at Ed and say what's this.   Then he throws them in a pile 
> and
>  waits for Fred to appear.   There are still going to be a large number
> that
>  I don't know.   We need more resources.
>  >>
>  >> When I edited Headlights magazine 40 years ago and someone gave me a
>  picture that they couldn't identify, I used it to fill space.   It became
> a
>  Can you identify this? feature.   But we had national circulation.   We
>  usually found out.   Unfortunately doing the same in Trolley Fare 
> probably
>  won't get us the same following.
>  >>
>  > A friend of a friend did this: http://retrographer.org/  I don't know
>  > how useful it would be in helping us though.  I'm not sure of their
>  > traffic volume.
>  >
>  > Also, wouldn't it be OK to scan in slides and negatives as-is and
>  > caption them with all the information on the slide (if any) and
>  > caption them later?  It would be easier on the physical media to not
>  > have to be handled as people try to figure out where it was taken and
>  > what is in it.  It would also make it easier for the general public to
>  browse.
>  >
>  > I could also imagine some computer vision (CV) or artificial
>  > intelligence (AI) students at CMU or Pitt having fun (doing a school
>  > project) trying to guess locations, which would then have to be
>  > approved by a human.  It'd only be useful with a reference of some
>  > kind in part of the picture, however, but there are good/decent
>  > archives of much of what's in the city as well as how extensive Google
>  > Street View is around the city which could help. Just a thought
> ::shrug::
>  >
>  > Jim
>  >
>  >
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