Where Menk made his mistake was that, with regard to passenger
trains, particularly on Burlington's Chicago-Denver route.
The Frisco's Oklahoma City, St.Louis mainline was very curvaceous,
even on the part between Oklahoma City and Tulsa, and certainly
between Tulsa and St. Louis. Thus one could not run fast passenger
trains on the line on overnight schedules. Even today, besides
having to bring the Tulsa-Oklahoma City line back to mainline
standards (the State of Oklahoma owns the line), there is going to
have to be a lot of curve-straightening to get speeds on the line
competitive with the Turner Turnpike.
The Q's line covered the more populous Denver-Chicago city pair and
it was already a high speed line that, if cab signalling had been
applied, could have been legally <shush...g> able to handle speeds
over 90 MPH and in fact did before speed restrictions were applied.
Thus overnight-everynight service attractive to the business customer
was still possible. Plus the Rocky Mountains are a year around
tourist attraction. Reequipping the DZ in 1956 with domes and
slumbercoaches basically left the train's only serious competitor,
the City of Denver, behind in a cloud of DZ dust and the train lost
its separate identity in the early sixties when it was combined with
the City of Portland.
Thus Menk, in the DZ, had a very viable competitor to the automobile
and airplane, whose only problem was probably excessive labor costs
due to outmoded work rules and labor-intensive equipment and
services. One wonders how well the DZ would do today if it were
established as a separate Denver-Chicago train on its own 16 1/2 to
17 hour schedule. In any case, the additional costs were paid for by
the RPO, so when it was discontinued, the train became uneconomical.
I think that, if Menk had not been so gung ho about passenger train
demise, but had, instead, done it reluctantly and only where
necessary, I do not think he would have had the bad reputation he
had, even with the history of ending passenger service on the Frisco.
Incidentally, if any railroad president got an unfairly bad rap, and
I admit guilt on this one, it was Myron Cristy of the Western Pacific
Railroad. For losses on the CZ were eating up, if I remember
correctly, 1/3 of the revenues of the Western Pacific and basically
killing the railroad. He is probably one whom history has vindicated
what he did when he did and for justifiable reasons and, had I know
then what I know now, I would have probably favored a California
Service-type arrangement as early as 1967.
sjl
--- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, cy svobodny <ctsvobodny@y...> wrote:
> Not unheard of to cook data. The bean counters at the
> UP did it years ago to both prove electrifcation was a
> good idea and later a bad idea. Using the same info
> both times, result depended on what the front office
> was infavor of at the time.
> --- Tom Smith <sd70mac@c...> wrote:
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