Railroad Readin'

RAILROAD READIN' (reprint courtesy San Juan Flyer)

Rock Island Requiem- The Collapse of a Mighty Fine Line

by Gregory L. Schneider, University of Kansas Press, 2013.

Reviewed by Ray Schmudde

Flyer readers know that American railroading suffered significantly post Korean War until the 3R and 4R Rail Acts and the 1980 Staggers Rail Act. Many of you will remember the Trains columnist whose monthly complaint was that his checking account provided a better rate of return than Class 1 railroads. The poor national economy and the railroad industry’s weakened balance sheets provide Gregory L. Schneider the backdrop for the slow-motion train wreck (pun intended) that was the decline of the Rock Island.

Schneider begins his tale pre-Second War, when in 1936 the nation had 70,000 railroad miles in receivership. Then, the Rock board of directors chose to pay stock dividends instead of putting resources into track maintenance. This perhaps was the start of the descent. He then moves to the Rock’s crisis period, beginning in the mid-1960’s as the Rock desperately tries to remain a solvent and viable network, to the extent of offering itself as a merger partner to the Union Pacific. Schneider holds to several themes throughout his book as the reasons for the Rock’s demise: non-rail competition from subsidized transportation modes, changing traffic patterns, population shifts, passenger losses, union wage demands in the face of inflation, constraining government regulations, and the rapacious behaviors of competing railroad presidents.

Occurring simultaneously with the Rock’s troubles was the breakdown of the Penn-Central and the government’s creation of Conrail (see The Men Who Loved Trains by Rush Loving, Jr., reviewed in the November 2006 Flyer by this writer). Schneider draws parallels between these two failing systems and their contrasting fates. Indeed, why did the one line benefit from a government bailout and the creation of a new company while the other road was left to wither into liquidation?

One of Schneider’s villains in the Rock’s demise is excessive government regulation of the railroads, specifically the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC). The ICC took 11 years (!) to approve the Rock’s merger with the U.P., and by then the U.P. was no longer interested in the badly deteriorated Rock. Some of that delay was due to the legal protestations of the CNW, which realistically saw a U.P.-Rock Island combination as a serious threat. Plus, the CNW itself wanted to join the U.P. Then, there was one of the Rock’s own directors, Henry Crown, who owned much of the Rock’s paper and who is depicted as being more interested in cashing out than saving the railroad and the little towns that relied on rail service. Rail union leadership doesn’t escape criticism either. Schneider argues that the rail strike in the Rock’s final days was the Rock’s deathblow. Schneider finds management guilty, too, as the bankruptcy trustee continually fails to come up with a reorganization plan. The list goes on.

Much of Rock Island Requiem takes place in boardrooms, the bankruptcy court, ICC hearings, merger talks, labor negotiations, Wall Street, and FRA findings. Yet the book is a page-turner, a profile of the well-loved Rock Island line that unlike the too-big-to-fail Penn Central was too small to save. Concern in Washington D.C. over the health of the nation’s rail system was elevated by both the Rock Island crisis and the Penn Central debacle necessitating the Conrail creation. As the Rock’s long-term bankruptcy finally turned into court-ordered liquidation, some benefits to the rail industry developed. Slowly, all too slowly to save the Rock, the Federal government loosened the reins of regulation as the Rock lay dying in the Midwest.

As this reviewer read the book, my thoughts could not but turn to my own experience (albeit on a much smaller scale) working with a group to save a portion of a line in rural Illinois that like the Rock in microcosm had too many miles, too few people, too few customers—most of them agricultural, and was parallel to another line that had both population and many manufacturing customers. Readers may remember my PowerPoint presentation on the Eastern Illinois Railroad Company (EIRC) given at our fall 2008 division meeting. The Staggers Rail Act and the 4R Rail Act allowed the NS to rid itself of that redundant Illinois trackage, and 26 years later the EIRC continues. The irony that railroad deregulation was recognized and passed by a Democratic president and Congress is not lost on Schneider. The 3R and 4R Rail Acts and the Staggers Rail Act all came in the Rock’s final years but too late to save that “mighty fine line.”

When this review was being written, this writer saw a short film on the Trains website about the Iowa Interstate Railroad, a successful regional line that runs on part of the Rock’s old east-west core trackage between Council Bluffs and Chicago. Thus, part of the Rock, at least in spirit, still lives.