[PRCo] Re: NCL et al
Fred Schneider
fwschneider at comcast.net
Sun Sep 16 21:40:47 EDT 2012
I think what happened in St. Louis pretty much pretty much applied to all of the properties. In fact, Dwight, years ago I got tired of some of the fringe at the museum in Baltimore telling me how evil NCL was and I made up a list of all the major properties by population and proved that the NCL owned ones had a better chance of longer survival of some rail routes than the non-NCL properties. Of course my doing that annoyed a few people. (Public agencies like Detroit, Cleveland, New York, Seattle, Chicago wiped out some really big operations, two of which might well have reasons for survival.)
El Paso … the cars were subsidizing the buses until Mexico evicted the company for making the toll bridges free and firing the Mexican toll collectors.
Oakland … I admit I don't have the whole picture here. My hunches are that (1) Key System and East Bay Street Railway and IERR had a monopoly on the transbay business until the Bay Bridge opened in 1938. Then it became so much nicer drive into San Francisco. From 1941 until 1945, gas rationing intervened and people were back on the Key trains. If other cities are any indication, their peak year might have been 1947 or 1948. Usually big cities had higher transit riding after the war the during the conflict because the servicemen came home and had no cars. But then we have a huge movement into suburban housing and away from the traditional rail lines. Oakland and Berkeley populations remained relatively constant after the war years right up until today. Richmond went from 23,000 in 1920 to 99,000 in 1945 and still climbed after the war. But a lot of people moved to the Oakland and Berkeley Hills and behind the hills. Contra Costa county went from 53,889 people in 1920 to 299,000 in 1950 to 1,049,025 in 2010. Alameda County (and that includes Oakland) went from 344,000 in 1920 to 740,000 in 1950 to 1,510,000 in 2010. I think it becomes pretty clear that if you want to serve the public by rail, you needed to extend and extend and extend and private companies didn't have that kind of money. BART had tax financing and they can serve the public that Key System could not.
Los Angeles … the local newspaper was encouraging the public to move to new houses in the suburbs. It's the Republican thing to do. You know … what's good for Chevrolet is good for the USA. Los Angeles Railway (LATL after 1944 … I think that was the year) serviced a rather compact area of LA County … perhaps 5 miles in any direction from downtown. Eagle Rock was probably the longest route … about 7 miles from downtown up to Colorado Blvd on the north. LATL serviced the old city; the areas that developed after the war were far beyond it's service area … essentially out on in Pacific Electric's jurisdiction except that now the people would rather use their cars. My friend Donald Duke used to tell two conflicting stories … one was how fast his father could get to work on Pacific Electric from San Marino. The other story was that Norman Duke moved from Beverly Hills to San Marino because he got tired of driving into the rising sun in the morning and into the setting sun on the way home. I suspect the second story was probably a lot more truthfully and probably mirrored most Angelinos.
There are some great lies out there that NCL got rid of the Los Angeles subway … that was operated by Pacific Electric. PE sold it off to a bus operator because they wanted out of the business.
Baltimore … if you bought a transit property in 1945 that served a major city and its fleet consisted of a few hundred (I think it was 270) PCC cars built between 1937 and 1944, 130 Peter Witt cars that were 15 years old, and 800 semi convertibles that ranged from 27 to 41 years old, and miles and miles of track needed renewal, and you are business man, would you rebuild hundreds of miles of track and buy 800 new streetcars or would you look into your crystal ball and say the public is buying cars … my riding is dropping … duh? Now lets add a further complication. Harry Barnes, the city traffic engineer, who wants one-way streets and wants you to pay to rearrange your track if you want to stay in business. Otherwise he wants you to use buses. Now how does that affect your decision? Baltimore Transit's answer was to get rid of all the routes Harry wanted them to get rid of until it got down to the two absolutely heaviest lines that required 200 cars and they BTC (reads NCL) said, you want us out of here, you pay for the new buses. And the city did pay for the buses to replace the streetcars on the last two lines.
Houston … NCL bought into it with the money they got from selling PTC to SEPTA in 1966 and ran it until about 1974. Houston was converted from rail to bus before World War II … NCL bought a bus company like many other bus lines they bought.
I am amused reading the Wikipedia story that says in 1947 National City Lines owned more than 100 electric streetcar systems. Were there 100 in the USA then?
The vast majority of the NCL properties were small companies that were on their last legs anyway or had already been converted to bus. But what appears in publication is often a myth. Example, Salt Lake City was an NCL property after 1944 and its last routes were converted by NCL. True. However, it has previously been converted to bus before the war and had rail service restored during the war by order of the Office of Defense Transportation. It was only running as a rail property during the war because of gas rationing and a federal edict from Guy Richardson of ODT. Did not much matter who was in command, it would be bus again as soon as that order was lifted and buses could again be obtained.
Another on-line source blames NCL for tearing out the streetcars in Butte, Montana. Huh? Copper production in Butte peaked in 1917. Some sources give the peak boomtown population as close to 100,000 but the highest U S census number was 41,611 in 1920. It was down to about 37,000 and falling like a rock when the cars quit running. Are we supposed to keep them running to haul the ghosts and visiting railfans? Interestingly, the bottom was around 23,000 before rich people from the west coast began buying property in Butte in the 1980s.
Another great city which NCL was blamed for converting was Fresno, California. Today I would use it as fabulous justification for a station on California's high speed rail line … the 2010 census counted 494,665 people there … why that's more than Pittsburgh and Homestead and Wilkinsburg and a few other boroughs in Allegheny County put together. But in the late 1930s when the trolleys were taken out of servie, Fresno only had about 58,000 people. Some of the best roads in the U. S., if we are to judge from Dwight Eisenhower's comments on his truck trip across the country in 1919, were in California. We should be able to assume that all the houses for all the people in Fresno after 1920 were supported by cars, not by trolleys. OK in 1920, Fresno only had 45,000 people and the car tracks probably supported the 25,000 that were there in 1910. I think I'd buy buses considering what was happening then.
On Sep 16, 2012, at 6:40 PM, Dwight Long wrote:
>
> Fred
>
> That's a much more balanced portrayal.
>
> NCL kept trams on most of the routes where it made sense on their
> properties, as long as more investment was required (a la St. Louis) than
> they could see recovering in any reasonable period of time.
>
> Dwight
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Fred Schneider" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org>
> Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2012 4:46 PM
> Subject: [PRCo] Re: some mon valley shots
>
>
>> St. Louis, according to George Arnoux who worked for them, was just a good
>> business property which was out to make money. If trolleys worked, they
>> ran them. If buses worked, they drove them. George pointed out to me
>> that they never had any plans to covert the property to bus; they did it
>> only when the city came up with a highway project that cost Public Service
>> more than they would ever recover.
>>
>> Yes, I did push the trigger too soon. NCL was GM, Mack, Phillips,
>> Standard and others. You could probably by a share too if you wanted it.
>>
>> I am also amazed by people who complain about how GM and NCL converted
>> Philadelphia Transportation Co. One of the chaps at the East Penn
>> meeting a week ago told me he had a document that I should look at … but
>> he hasn't showed it to me … a circa 1950 before NCL proposal by PTC to
>> convert most of the system to bus. He noted that there were some
>> differences between how it worked out. PTC originally planned to convert
>> route 60 to bus and keep route 42. NCL converted route 42 and kept route
>> 60. But the process was very similar … we will keep some of the best
>> routes and convert most of it to bus.
>>
>> The average railfan needs to have a scapegoat on which to blame the demise
>> of his toys. They cannot accept basic economics.
>>
>> Look at Lancaster, Pennsylvania for example … 6th largest rail property in
>> Pennsylvania in mileage and fleet but smaller in terms of revenue. In
>> the best year they ran over 100 inbound and over 100 outbound cars an hour
>> and hauled only 40,000 riders. By 1923 they were spending more than they
>> were taking in. They lost money in every year from 1923 through 1931 and
>> in 1931 they told their bondholders … sorry guys, we're broke … we're not
>> paying your interest this year. The bondholders forced them into
>> receivership and in 1932 CTC was divorced from EBS and PPL and UGI. It
>> became a bus company between 1932 and 1947.
>>
>> Allentown … that was another EBS property … 4th or 5th largest in the
>> state … Lester Wismer said he never saw a full car on the Liberty Bell
>> Route after gas rationing ended in 1945. Obviously they were having
>> problems much earlier because Nazareth, Emmaus-Macungie and Slatington
>> were abandoned between 1929 and 1932.
>>
>> Reading Traction and Light was the other contender for 4th or 5th largest.
>> Like LVT it had over 200 miles of track. It's first abandonment was the
>> connection between Pottstown and Boyertown in 1926. Oley Valley was gone
>> in late 1920s or early 1930s.
>> The entire Lebanon Division quit in 1930. Norristown was gone about 1933.
>> The longest lines out of Reading were also gone early in the Depression
>> leaving only the Reading City routes to go until 1947-1952.
>>
>> And none of these were NCL properties.
>>
>> Scranton and Wilkes-Barre also began converting in the 1930s.
>>
>> I guess we also forget that the PRT Bucks County, Montgomery County and
>> Delaware County lines were converted in the 1920s and 1930s. We blame NCL
>> for the massacre.
>>
>> And Pittsburgh had already wiped out Oakmont in 1937. Shadeland went
>> before the war. So did one of the Manchester routes. The thing that
>> saved Pittsburgh was conversion to one man cars as early as they did.
>> They were no friend of the unions but they survived for a long time.
>>
>>
>> On Sep 16, 2012, at 3:56 PM, Dwight Long wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Fred
>>>
>>> GM did not own NCL. They owned stock in it, but I don't think enough for
>>> control. Enough to be favored on NCL's bus purchases, to be sure, but
>>> not
>>> enough to do what some fans think they nefariously did.
>>>
>>> CF St. Louis, for example. NCL was just a sensible business, not the
>>> monster it is often portrayed to be.
>>>
>>> DEL
>>>
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "Fred Schneider" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
>>> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org>
>>> Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2012 11:43 AM
>>> Subject: [PRCo] Re: some mon valley shots
>>>
>>>
>>>> And GM didn't own bus lines either, it controlled through ownership of
>>>> NCL.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sep 16, 2012, at 12:43 AM, Dwight Long wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Fred
>>>>>
>>>>> Actually that is a bit closer to the truth than the NCL shibboleth. To
>>>>> the
>>>>> extent that EB&S owned interest in streetcar lines, GE did own them.
>>>>> More
>>>>> appropriate to say that GE controlled many streetcar lines, through
>>>>> EB&S.
>>>>> So that one has some truth to it.
>>>>>
>>>>> Dwight
>>>>>
>>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>>> From: "Fred Schneider" <fwschneider at comcast.net>
>>>>> To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org>
>>>>> Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2012 1:50 PM
>>>>> Subject: [PRCo] Re: some mon valley shots
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>> You mean just like General Electric owned streetcar lines?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sep 15, 2012, at 1:35 PM, Dwight Long wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Fred
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Perhaps he also believes that NCL “done em in.”
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Dwight
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> From: Fred Schneider
>>>>>>> Sent: Friday, 14 September, 2012 11:38
>>>>>>> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org
>>>>>>> Subject: [PRCo] Re: some mon valley shots
>>>>>>> Oh, one of those kind. Just because the buses were more economical
>>>>>>> and
>>>>>>> preserved free enterprise a little longer than would have happened
>>>>>>> with
>>>>>>> a
>>>>>>> heavy investment in rails, substations, copper wires and owning your
>>>>>>> own
>>>>>>> rights-of-ways, they still believe that economics 101 is false.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Sep 14, 2012, at 11:04 AM, Edward H. Lybarger wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Scott Beveridge is a reporter for the Washington Observer-Reporter.
>>>>>>>> He
>>>>>>>> repeatedly insists during interviews that the bus companies put the
>>>>>>>> trolleys
>>>>>>>> out of business, and won't listen when the facts are explained.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>>>>> From: pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementix.org
>>>>>>>> [mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounce at lists.dementix.org] On Behalf Of
>>>>>>>> Fred
>>>>>>>> Schneider
>>>>>>>> Sent: Friday, September 14, 2012 10:39 AM
>>>>>>>> To: pittsburgh-railways at dementix.org
>>>>>>>> Subject: [PRCo] Re: some mon valley shots
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> The PCC looks like a bad print from a Bob Brown negative . a
>>>>>>>> commercial
>>>>>>>> machine made (what you see is what you get) print. The negative
>>>>>>>> was
>>>>>>>> perfectly OK.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On Sep 14, 2012, at 8:50 AM, Derrick Brashear wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> http://www.flickr.com/photos/scott_beveridge/7983802853
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> and see also
>>>>>>>>> https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/r270/523241_972537076092_5
>>>>>>>>> 37767445_n.jpg which I home you can. Same guy. His comment is
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> They have some cool old trolley photos here at the Greater Monessen
>>>>>>>>> Historical Society. This one was taken in Charleroi, circa 1920.
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> (from
>>>>>>>>> https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=972537076092&set=a.60265498776
>>>>>>>>> 2.2145700.35106432&type=1&theater)
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> --
>>>>>>>>> Derrick
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
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