Talk:List of Pennsylvania Railroad predecessor railroads

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Here is a temporary page for a restructuring of the article. Here is a tree of leases and other operating agreements.
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I think this article could benefit by being more structured, possibly by leases and operating agreements rather than mergers:

Railroad Formed Leased Eliminated
Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington Railroad (1902-1976) 1902, from merger 1917, by Pennsylvania Railroad 1976, taken over by Conrail
Philadelphia and Delaware County Rail-Road (1831-1836)
Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad (1836-1902)		 1831, chartered 1902, merged into Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington Railroad
Delaware Railroad (1836-1976) 1836, chartered 1857, by Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad 1976, taken over by Conrail
Southwark Rail-Road (1831-1877) 1831, chartered 1854, by Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad 1877, merged into Philadelphia, Wilmington and Baltimore Railroad

--NE2 06:54, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm. Having contemplated, on and off, the best ways to represent railroad corporate structure (particularly that of the PRR) for the past eight years or so, my advice is RUN WHILE YOU STILL CAN. But I'll try to work up something a bit more solid over the next few days. Choess 08:09, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Hah. I'm interested enough in it, for now at least. I think the main problem is the large number of predecessors. We should be able to split it somewhat by looking at the pre-WWI days when the system was split operations-wise into several companies. To that end, here are the operating companies listed in the corporate history:
Short lines
  • Baltimore and Sparrows Point Railroad
  • Barnegat Railroad
  • Cape Charles Railroad
  • Cherry Tree and Dixonville Railroad
  • Indianapolis and Frankfort Railroad (leased by the PRR January 1, 1921)
  • Louisville Bridge and Terminal Railway (leased by the PRR January 1, 1921)
  • Mackinac Transportation Company
  • Manufacturers Railway
  • New York Bay Railroad (PRR had trackage rights; the NYBRR may have operated its own trains?)
  • Philadelphia and Beach Haven Railroad
  • Philadelphia and Camden Ferry Company
  • Rosslyn Connecting Railroad
  • Union Railroad (leased by the PRR April 1, 1918)
  • Waynesburg and Washington Railroad
  • Winfield Railroad
Jointly-owned companies that may have operated their own trains

--NE2 13:16, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I started with the reorganization at Talk:List of Pennsylvania Railroad predecessor railroads/Temporary. --NE2 17:26, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Musings

This may be a bit stream-of-consciousness, and colored by the perspective I've been pursuing, which is organizing all this in a database, rather than on a web page. Bear with me. There are at least four levels:

  1. Corporate identity. A RR is consolidated with B RR to form C RR. D RR merged into E RR. The corporate existance of one or more companies comes to a distinct end, and perhaps a new one is created (as when a railroad is chartered). This is the "root" level, so to speak. Of course, non-railroad companies, individuals, or even unincorporated groups of individuals can own, build, and operate railroad property, albeit not as common carriers, but that can of worms can largely be left on the shelf for our purposes.
  2. Ownership and conveyance of property. While the ICC valuation reports lump them together, foreclosure and reorganization are really at a level up from corporate identity, IMO. Of course, most general railroad laws, AFAIK, provide for the near-automatic creation of a new company by those holding a railroad sold at foreclosure, and the useful life of a railroad, all of whose property has been foreclosed upon, generally ends after the sale. Unfortunately, there are always occasional and unpleasant exceptions. The Wiscasset and Quebec Railroad, in Maine, was foreclosed and reorganized as the Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington, later abandoned. The present tourist line was able to revive the original W&Q charter and operates under it on a small portion of the old roadbed. (To be fair, this is an anomaly. The W&Q was never declared "abandoned" after the foreclosure and reorganization, an error. Such companies normally disappear after a set period of time for failing to fulfill their charter, AIUI.) The Lehigh & New England bought (or leased?) a small piece of track jointly from the Harrisburg & New England and the Harrisburg & Delaware River Railroads. The former went through two foreclosures and reorganizations to become the latter, but due to a muddled chain of titles, the H&NE continued to claim corporate existence! Perhaps more applicably, since mortages did not always cover the entirety of a railroad, multiple railroad companies might form after the sheriff's sale. See the history of the Pomeroy & Newark Railroad in the valuation reports.
  3. Leases. Of course, 99- and 999-year leases were effectively permanent. Of course, sometimes a lease might only apply to part of the railroad. (As of the valuation date, the RDG Chester Branch, former PW&B main line, was in fact a 999-year lease from PB&W). Leases could also be transferred from one company to another, in some cases, and sometimes they were transient.
  4. Operations. Similar to leases, although it seems to me one could operate a railroad one did not own simply by virtue of an operating agreement, not necessarily a lease. (Trackage rights, for instance.) Choess 16:22, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the most important is operations (and therefore leases), since that's what the "public" (which may in some cases only be railroad employees) sees. CSX still operates the Baltimore and Ohio Chicago Terminal Railroad; NS operates the Cincinnati, New Orleans and Texas Pacific Railway and South Carolina and Georgia Railroad; Pan Am Railways (just found out it changed its name!) operates the Boston and Maine Railroad and Maine Central Railroad; and in all these cases the "real names" are typically used only when talking about historical operations. I also think reorganizations with a clear line of succession should be treated in this list as a renaming; the individual article can give the details.

Since we're dealing historically, we need to decide what to do about leases and ownerships (a fifth case) that were cancelled. I think it would be best to mention them briefly only if they were major, like the PRR's ownership of the Long Island Rail Road.

You're right about operations - there are mentions in the valuation reports of informal operating agreements. The Catonsville Short Line Railroad is a case where it was formally agreed that the PW&B would be able to operate over it; the Catonsville Short Line Railroad was able to operate its own trains but did not.

An interesting case is the 1976 formation of Conrail. Conrail only acquired the assets that they believed would be profitable. Other lines remained with the former companies without the ICC requirement to apply before abandoning. --NE2 17:25, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Another problem with going by legal company is the PRR's tendency to merge unrelated lines in their later days. The Connecting Railway ended up as a large system with lines all over the place, despite having been leased by the PRR in 1868. The 1958 maps at [1] show this well - see the Canton District. --NE2 18:33, 1 December 2006 (UTC)