The Well-Dressed Hobo

Rush Loving

Description

Growing up in the bustling railroad town of Norfolk, Virginia, and joining his conductor grandfather on overnight runs, future Fortune journalist Rush Loving was enchanted with railroads at an early age. In this extraordinary inside look at eight decades of the railroad industry and some of its greatest leaders, Loving reminisces about his colorful people and fascinating anecdotes. Chatting with brakemen, engineers, and executives, Loving shares stories he collected in locomotive cabs, business cars, executive suites and even the White House. They paint a compelling, intimate portrait of the railroad industry and its leaders, both inept and visionary. Above all, Loving tells stories of the dedicated men and women who truly love trains and know the industry from the rails up.

Acknowledgments
Introduction: A Mix of Love and Luck
1. Rumbling up the Horseshoe
2. Averell Harriman and His Streamliner
3. Sin and the Aspiring Reporter
4. Al Perlman Buys a Hill
5. The Country Boy Who Was King of Florida
6. Wooing Bankers With A Railway Car
7. The Locomotive That Sashayed
8. The 'Token Yokel' Meanders North
9. The Biggest Railroad Story of Them All
10. 'The Greatest Thing Since Sex and Watermelon'
11. The Merger That Worked
12. The Dinner Debate With Graham Claytor
13. The Steadfast Colonel And the Unsteady Rock
14. 'Who Knows Hays Watkins?'
15. A Modern Annie Oakley Takes on Lou Menk
16. The Lawyers's Son from Buffalo
17. 'Hays Must Not Know'
18. J. B. Hunt Takes a Ride On the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe
19. Two Empty Limousines
20. 'They Nod off Regularly on the Job'
21. Déjà vu Once More
22. Their Greatest Task
Index

Sujets

• Railroads
• Transportation
• General officer
• Rail transport
• General
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 23 mars 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253020727
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

THE WELL-DRESSED HOBO
RAILROADS PAST AND PRESENT
George M. Smerk, Editor
A list of books in the series appears at the end of this volume.
THE WELL-DRESSED HOBO
The Many Wondrous Adventures of a Man Who Loves Trains
RUSH LOVING JR .
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS Bloomington Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2016 by Rush Loving, Jr.
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Loving, Rush, author.
Title: The well-dressed hobo : the many wondrous adventures of a man who loves trains / Rush Loving Jr.
Description: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, [2016] | Series: Railroads past and present | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015043481 (print) | LCCN 2015047701 (ebook) | ISBN 9780253020635 (cl : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780253020727 (eb)
Subjects: LCSH: Loving, Rush. | Railroads-United States-History. | Railroads-United States-Biography.
Classification: LCC HE2751 .L69 2016 (print) | LCC HE2751 (ebook) | DDC 385.0973-dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015043481
1 2 3 4 5 21 20 19 18 17 16
To our children, Kennon Whittle, Kate Loving, John Whittle, Borden Loving, and Leslie Loving
And as always to my one and only Jane
C ONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction: A Mix of Love and Luck
1 Rumbling up the Horseshoe
2 Averell Harriman and His Streamliner
3 Sin and the Aspiring Reporter
4 Al Perlman Buys a Hill
5 The Country Boy Who Was King of Florida
6 Wooing Bankers with a Railway Car
7 The Locomotive That Sashayed
8 The Token Yokel Meanders North
9 The Biggest Railroad Story of Them All
10 The Greatest Thing Since Sex and Watermelon
11 The Merger That Worked
12 The Dinner Debate with Graham Claytor
13 The Steadfast Colonel and the Unsteady Rock
14 Who Knows Hays Watkins?
15 A Modern Annie Oakley Takes on Lou Menk
16 The Lawyer s Son from Buffalo
17 Hays Must Not Know
18 J. B. Hunt Takes a Ride on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe
19 Two Empty Limousines
20 They Nod Off Regularly on the Job
21 D j Vu Once More
22 Their Greatest Task
Index
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
MANY MEN AND WOMEN CONTRIBUTED TO THE CREATION OF The Well-Dressed Hobo . I am indebted especially to those who over the decades provided much of the information in this book. Most are gone now, and the information and advice they gave is their legacy. I came to value them over the course of my career, and I appreciate the rich lode of knowledge they provided.
A number of the people who helped directly with the writing of this book asked that what they told me not be attributed to them; thus I must refrain from citing them by name, despite the fact their help often was crucial. Among the others special thanks go to John Rebensdorf of the Union Pacific for his insights into John Kenefick and the merger movement of the 1990s; Norfolk and Western s Jack Fishwick, who provided behind-the-scenes details of the Dereco venture; Mike Haverty of the Kansas City Southern, an invaluable source on the railroads great breakthrough in intermodal transportation; my friends Hays Watkins of CSX, who patiently kept providing essential details, and Baldy Baldwin, who let his fountain of knowledge pour out for the enrichment of these pages.
It is impossible to single out everyone but special thanks do go to Earle Dunford and Beverly Orndorff, retirees from the Times-Dispatch , for keeping my facts straight and adding to the colorful story of newspapers in their glory days. Thanks to an alert from Fortune s Carol Loomis I was able to correct errors in my account of the magazine s momentous transition to a biweekly. To Carol I am especially grateful. Another Fortune colleague, Jo Thomson, provided colorful details that enhanced the description of the magazine s research and checking process. I also want to thank my old friend and colleague Tom Hoppin for pushing me to get all the details and corroborating scenes from his years at Penn Central.
An old colleague, Jim Hanscomb, helped solve the mystery of the three banks that Fishwick wooed for their crucial votes. Mort Fuller, David Brown, and Henry Posner provided insights into regional railroads. Darius Gaskins was helpful with an insider s view of a landmark decision by the Interstate Commerce Commission and life at the Burlington Northern after deregulation. Bill Greenwood of the BN added considerable grist about the deregulation days, too. Norfolk Southern s Jim McClellan provided valuable insights into the state of today s railroads.
Bill Howes and Paul Goodwin, both CSX alumni, and Eric Beshers in Washington all made crucial contributions to the chapter on the proposal to sell the CSX railroad. Jim Hagen, who ran marketing at CSX and later was chairman of Conrail, provided invaluable knowledge about both the proposed sale of CSX and the industry s slow change to an open market.
Others whom I wish to thank include Courtney Wilson and Ryan McPherson of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum, Nick Fry of the Barriger Library, Jim Wrinn of Trains magazine, Ed Greenberg of the Association of American Railroads, and Richard and Preston Claytor. Representatives of various railroads were helpful as well. They included Frank Brown and Katie Buchanan of Norfolk Southern, Zak Andersen and Julie Herrick of BNSF, Mark Davis and Abigail Cape of Union Pacific, and Gary Sease of CSX.
At Indiana University Press my editors, Sarah Jacobi and Nancy Lightfoot, supported the project from start to finish, ensuring that we got the book out on time. I especially owe my gratitude to my copy editor, Carol Kennedy, who did a highly professional job of correcting misspelled names and keeping me accurate.
My colleague Fred Frailey and my agent Tom Wallace both gave me needed encouragement as I struggled to master an unfamiliar style of writing. I particularly appreciate their help. And, of course, as always I owe the book s success to my wife, Jane, for her patience and constant support as we lived through seemingly endless deadlines.
THE WELL-DRESSED HOBO
INTRODUCTION
A Mix of Love and Luck
ONE FIRST-CLASS PASSAGE
PROBABLY I WOULD NOT HAVE BECOME A SUCCESSFUL WRITER if my parents had not brought me up on Shakespeare and the King James Version of the Bible. The Bible is a wonderful collection of great stories. And it pictures a lot of chaos, stories of people slaying each other and begetting everybody.
But it also has some parts that inspire order out of the chaos, much like the rulebook of a railroad: the Ten Commandments, for one thing. They can be very useful to anyone who tries to establish any order in a chaotic world. After all, the Ten Commandments have been the mainstay of Western civilization.
My friend Walter Wells recently told me an interesting story about the Ten Commandments. Walter, who retired not too many years ago as executive editor of the International Herald-Tribune to oversee his world-class vineyard in Provence, is a vestryman at an Anglican church in Paris. He said that the senior warden at St. Cuthbert s, somewhere in England, came across their vicar and found the man to be most distraught. It seems his bicycle had disappeared, and he could only conclude that it had been stolen by someone in his congregation. The vicar had only recently arrived in that parish and felt he was at a disadvantage.
I don t yet know a lot of the people here, he said, so I really don t know whom to ask for advice. You know this congregation. How can I get the fellow who stole the bicycle to give it back?
The warden thought it over for a minute and said, You must preach on the Ten Commandments, and, when you get to thou salt not steal, bit, you should really come down hard, and use a very specific example of things that should not be stolen-especially a bicycle.
The vicar seemed to like that.
The warden wasn t at the service the next Sunday, but several days later he saw the vicar riding along on the bike.
I see the sermon worked, said the warden, feeling very pleased with himself.
Well, not really, said the vicar. What happened was when I got to thou shalt not commit adultery, I remembered where I d left the bicycle.
Good journalism is all about remembering little things, like where you ve been. And following my work, I have been just about everywhere, riding on most of the major railroads of America, piecing together brawls in boardrooms and deceptions in counting houses.
Whatever I ve achieved in the world has been due largely to luck. The ultimate luck has been my choice of profession. Not many men get to do the two things they love the most, but I ve done just that. I have built my life around writing and railroads.
My interest in trains started as early as I can recall. As a young boy I fell in love with transport