"Parent Company"

[NW Mailing List]

On 10/9/07, Neill wrote:

>

> I am curious as to the role, if any. of PRR, of the accession of Mr.

> Saunders to the Presidency of the NW following Mr. Smith.  Mr. Saunders,

> according to our friend Mr. Newton's excellent book, The Tale of a Turbine,

> was able to convince the Board of the N&W to avoid any more funding for the

> turbine program in favor of more rapid dieselization, a decision resembling

> one that I believe the PRR had already made.


I believe William D. Middleton covered some of this in a "Trains"
article published I'm thinking in the early '90s (the Trains on-line
index isn't well populated for the '80s and '90s yet and the PDF
indexes only go back to 1997). Middleton postulated that Stuart
Saunders was pressured by the PRR to scrap (perfectly good) steam
engines and rapidly dieselize. By doing so, it made N&W stock more
attractive to investors and increased the PRR revenue when it
liquidated its N&W stock to improve its cash position.

Perhaps someone can lay their hands quicker than I on several years of
Trains indexes and pinpoint the exact issue that carried this article.
I don't remember if there was any rebuttal or follow up, but it would
be easy to check given the date of Middleton's article.

Bruce in Blacksburg