At least some of the BN management that are still with the BNSF think of
Menk as a god.... but they were probably from the NP or GN if they had any
pre-merger experience or weren't some of his Frisco toads.....
I still proudly have two Menk the Fink buttons from the 5632 Birthday Fan
Trip, which for weeks afterwards you could see Suburban Service employees
flashing with great glee....
Charlie Vlk
----- Original Message -----
From: "Norm Andersen" <Norm_Andersen@msn.com>
To: <BRHSlist@yahoogroups.com>
Cc: "Fred Frailey" <ffrailey@kiplinger.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 11:07 AM
Subject: Re: [BRHSlist] Fred and Lou from Railspot, was: Obituary: Herb
Wallace, Jr.
> Dear List and Fred,
>
> Just so there is no misunderstanding, I was Herb Wallace's chief clerk
( in Burlingtoneze, "Special Movements Clerk") when Lou Menk came on the
scene.
>
> Menk did more to destroy the morale and pride of the Passenger
Department and the railroad then Harry Murphy developed in his long tenure!
Menk's tactics certainly did result in all of the train-offs but they were
brutal, uncaring, unscrupulous and unprincipled! On the CB&Q, the Denver
Zephyr, 1 and 10, were in the black yet he saw to it that they went into the
red. Passengers on remnants of what once were proud Zephyrs and other trains
were treated unimaginably poorly and subject to embarrassment and ridicule.
Passenger train crews were victims of Menk's policies insofar as "taking
care of" passengers. The railroad itself was subject to undermaintenance and
all trains suffered. And, all customers suffered.
>
> Did the GN and NP passenger trains suffer the same indignities?
Absolutely not. Was it that Burlington passenger service was so highly
regarded that Menk had to destroy this sterling reputation? Yes and he
certainly did that. He brought Burlington passenger service to its knees,
disgraced it and then delivered the coup de grace!
>
> Menk was no role model. He was a tool of the board and the
stockholders, the GN and the NP. His reputation was tarnished even as it was
being made.
>
> Norm Andersen
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: okt@juno.com
> To: BRHSlist@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 1:03 AM
> Subject: [BRHSlist] Fred and Lou from Railspot, was: Obituary: Herb
Wallace, Jr.
>
>
>
> --------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Fred Frailey <ffrailey@kiplinger.com>
> To: "texaszephyr" <texaszephyr@sw.rr.com>
> Cc: Gblatham@aol.com, railspot@yahoogroups.comI dunno, TZ, I can't see
> much difference in the Texas Zephyr's going to
> Vahalla on Sept. 11, 1967, versus later that year or the spring of 1968.
> I
> guess your point is that the Ft Worth & Denver was duplicitous to argue
> that the mail was coming off before the Post Office made it official.
I'd
>
> say its timing was dead-on! And doggone it, TZ, just admit you made a
> boner accusing Lou Menk of crimes he didn't commit. He didn't put the TZ
> up for discontinuance "early" because of the loss of U.S. mail, because
> he
> was long gone Lou by then. And he certainly didn't kick the passengers
> off
> the Billings train at 1030 on a Friday night (in Hemingsford, Neb., to
be
>
> exact) - he'd been at Northern Pacific two years by then. Other people
> did
> those things. Accuse Lou of things he DID do, like lower the
> superelevations and whatever. Or tell Time Magazine that the Texas
Zephyr
>
> was an example of a train that shouldn't be in the timetable because of
> whatever reasons he gave. As for the Northern Lines (GN,. NP, Q)
"working
>
> in tandem," that's just not true. John Budd at GN, Lou Menk at NP and
> Bill
> Quinn at Burlington in the late 1960s all approached their passenger
> train
> problems in different ways. Budd was a chip off of Harry Murphy - he
> loved
> the Empire Builder like a son. Menk was OK to his transcontinental
> passenger trains at NP and Quinn was doing everything he could to lower
> the train miles once his big network was shorn of the mail revenue - by
> 1968-69 he was a desperate man! Nothing any of them did or said to me
> even
> hinted at collusion or "working in tandem."
>
> Fred
>
>
>
>
>
> "texaszephyr" <texaszephyr@sw.rr.com>
> 09/03/2003 02:28 PM
>
> To
> "Fred Frailey" <ffrailey@kiplinger.com>
> cc
> <Gblatham@aol.com>, <railspot@yahoogroups.com>
> Subject
> Re: RS: Obituary: Herb Wallace, Jr.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Fred,
>
> I know that most (maybe 80-90%) of the US Mail was removed from the
> trains
> in the fall of 1967. That's one of the historic periods of time that I
> always stress in my books.
>
> But that's not the point I was making. What I was trying to say was that
> the
> Burlington used the loss of US mail as the primary reason to terminate
> the
> TEXAS ZEPHYR. But what has never made any sense here was that the USPS
> did
> not make the announcement (down here at least) until Sept. 1, 1967 well
> after the CB&Q had sent in its train off petition (stating this excuse)
> to
> the ICC. On top of this the USPS announcement gave no time frame for the
> definite removal of US Mail on the TZ. It was all supposed to take place
> nationwide within a 12 to 24 month time frame.
>
> So how was this accomplished?
>
> The facts are that we have a train off petition which makes the
statement
> that the recent loss of the US Mail contract is the primary reason for
> the
> Burlington not making enough money to keep the train running.
>
> But we have a train that was still handling US Mail on Sept. 11, 1967
> (just
> as it always had).
>
> So in other words the ICC gave the Burlington permission to cut a train
> on
> account of lost mail contracts when in fact the US mail was still on the
> train on the day that they made their last runs.
>
> Since the TZ was never allowed to operate a single day without mail,
> sleeping car service or dining cars, how are we supposed to know if the
> train could have continued to run a bit longer? Late October? Christmas
> 1967? Fact is in the case of the TEXAS ZEPHYR we'll just never know.
>
> At least the Santa Fe continued to operate several trains (Kansas
Cityan,
> Chicagoan, California Special, etc.) several months after the mail had
> been
> yanked. Same with the KCS and T&P. I think that we would all be very
hard
> pressed to find any other example of a train in Railspot territory that
> was
> discontinued on account of an event that had not yet occurred.
>
> Let's compare the Santa Fe and the Burlington. We know that John Reed of
> the
> Santa Fe completely caught off guard on the speed in which the mail was
> yanked. So how was it Lou Menk was able to use an event that had not yet
> occurred? Devine speculation?
>
> I'm not arguing that it would not have happened at a later date. We all
> know
> that it would have eventually been removed in October or at least prior
> to
> January 1, 1968 just like most other runs in this area. But to use the
> loss
> of a mail contract as their primary excuse when the train in question
was
> never allowed to operate a single day without handling US mail seems to
> say
> all that we need to know about the mindset of the Menk regime and the
ICC
>
> at
> the time.
>
> As for Menk not being with the Burlington at the time of the
> Lincoln-Billings incident, his policies had been implemented and the die
> was
> already being cast to merge the CB&Q, GN and NP anyway. Its not that big
> of
> a stretch to know that all three lines were working in tandem to
> eliminate
> as many trains as possible before the merger. It was just a bit of
> housecleaning before the lines all became BN.
>
> TZ
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Fred Frailey" <ffrailey@kiplinger.com>
> To: "texaszephyr" <texaszephyr@sw.rr.com>
>
>
> > Across the entire Burlington system, and across the entire U.S. rail
> system for that
> > matter, virtually all first-class mail was removed in the fall of
1967,
> > mostly between mid September and mid October of that year. I don't
know
> > the source of your remark that the postal service meant to do this
over
>
> a
> > two-year period. Maybe it did say that, but in fact 90% of the deed
was
> > done immediately afterward - so rapidly that Santa Fe president John
> Reed
> > says he was stunned and shocked. It is inconceivable to me that of all
> the
> > trains in the U.S., the remaining pair of FWD trains would be
exempted.
> > Had they remained into mid October, they would have been threadbare of
> > storage mail and definitely without a Railway Post Office.
>
>
>
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
>
>
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