Re: PC: PC as First Choice

[NES3524@xxxxxxx]

In a message dated 98-07-28 20:24:15 EDT, evillmike -AT- hotmail.com writes:

<<  If you had to choose between the oval, the 
 keystone or the copulating worms which one would you chose.  What I am 
 trying to find out is if there is anybody who is first and foremost a PC 
 fan. ...  I would like  to hear rom someone who's first choice RR is the PC
and why they made  that decision. >>

I am not ashamed to say that my allegiance is first and foremost PC.  The why
part of it is probably just timing and exposure.  The PC was created when I
was 12; I have virtually no memories of its predecessors as live entities
(although their tired-looking rolling stock was still abundant).  For that
reason, I harbored no animosity toward PC as a PRR/NYC/NH "killer," as I had
not developed a bond to them.

In its day, i.e, while I was growing up, the PC was the largest RR in the
country, and here in the northeast it was omnipresent.  Indeed, it was the
big, new thing out there on the national RR scene, along with BN, and later,
Amtrak.  Kind of like BNSF today I guess.  

For me, being a (young) railfan meant looking at, visiting, reading about the
PC.  Sure it had plenty of troubles; this was reinforced daily as part of each
morning's traffic news on the radio seemed to contain at least one report of a
major delay on one or more of PC's commuter lines.   Still, a trip to say,
Sunnyside yard meant seeing the PC and LIRR, and it was those employees that I
would speak to.   One way to look at it would be a comparison to rooting for
your home town team, even if they lost most of the time.  It's still your
team.  Many other RR's since then have lead troubled lives, and were the
results of unpopular mergers, yet their fans are there.

Now Amtrak and Conrail, on the other hand, never excited me, as each took away
a piece of PC, first the intercity passenger, then freight, and with the
states taking over commuter, the worms were dead.