Re: PC: Another Penn Central Book.

["Jerry Jordak" <jer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

w8ln -AT- juno.com said:
 
> > To me, perhaps the most important cause of the PC failure was the grand 
total of ten minutes of thought that went into the merger. 
> 
> This may have changed the timing of the failure, but not the ultimate 
outcome. PRR, NYC and New Haven were doomed in 1968 and by then they would 
have drug down any potential merger partner in any combination as the game 
was played at that time.

Actually, when you think about it from an operations standpoint, history has 
repeated since then several times. I don't know if they failed to heed the 
lessons of history and lacked planning, or just the complexity of the task at 
hand, but consider the service meltdowns that happened after these mergers:

UP+C&NW
UP+SP
CSX/Conrail/NS

-JWJ