The Most Surprising Railroad You Have Grown to Dislike?

Well for me it's a double whammy...

 

First it was the PC 

and now it's the NS.

 

to be Black and white is not my forte for being a big co.

Paul, I have to agree with you - Union Pacific.

The "Polar Railroad". Folks aren't smart enough to come up with their own logo! They had to rip off the Pennsy's "PRR"!! Very poor taste!!!

I don't really have a "dislike" railroad that is within the US of A.

 

If there is anything I dislike about railroads, it is that they consolidate or absorb smaller railroads. Ideally, there would still be a PRR, NYC, ACL, L&N, etc.

Beyond dislike, LOATHE the way the management from the Southern RR treated my father after the merger with the N&W. MY railroad, my motive power and roster. Southern has no place on my railroad.

 

Gilly

Personally, I have always been treated well by both Southern and NS personnel, including the Claytor brothers (Graham and Robert), on their MANY steam excursions from 1974-1994! GREAT railroads, GREAT leaders in MY book! 

I don't 'dislike' any of them, but I will go along with the UP and NS not being my favorite color schemes for engines. I do have some UP stuff for my layout however as it is a local road to my area. I don't have nay steamers, but the MTH Premier UP Challenger in the greyhound color scheme is one of my favorites for a steam engine. The new BNSF swoosh, 3rd generation, or whatever it's called is my favorite and BNSF is the main road on my layout.

Union Pacific.

By far it has to be the UP for me!

 

They bought out the Chicago North Western RR!

 

 

I don't dislike any of the current Class 1's but, I won't include them on my layout.  I have to deal with all of them through my day job and really don't wish to be reminded of them on evenings and weekends.

Curt

"When the U.P. and Milwaukee Road tied in their passenger routes, the Milwaukee Road painted all their passenger equipment yellow and gray. Yuk!!! I'm sure there were valid reasons for the paint job, but I still have dislike for the colors and the Union Pacific"

 

But Paul, yellow is my favorite color. 

This man wins the prize!

 

I don't dislike any railroad but my favorites are the Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern. 

 

How anybody can dislike the UP or any other railroad for that matter needs to take a deep breath and maybe get a new hobby. 

Penn Central and Conrail are the worst ever

Conrail.

 

I became very interested in railroads, and railroading, just as Conrail was formed. I lived near the tracks, my work took me into their Newark NJ Oak Island yard occasionally, and I started an HO Conrail empire.

 

I thought it was a cool railroad ... a strong railroad rising out of the northeastern rail debacle. I turned into a quasi Conrail fanboy. Lol.

 

Then ... it was dismembered.

 

Oy.

 

Penn Central.

 

Not fond of Conrail either, but PC is the only one I can say I dislike.

 

Andy

the PU um UP. I stay with mostly eastern roads with Rio Grande and Santa Fe mixed in

I looked at this only because I thought that it was a really odd question...it is, really,

but, I, too, find myself annoyed with the UP. The petty model RR decoration/copyright

thing of a few years ago did not help, but it's something subtle. Not sure what.

I find myself shooting photos of locos - and skipping the UP ones - and not even

really thinking about it, typically. "Oh, it's only a UP SD-xx".

 

I don't like the paint scheme, though I like yellow and I like gray. I love my Veranda

turbine, in -spite- of it being UP, not because. Heck, I'm a NYC fan, but even the PRR

doesn't annoy me. Much. OK, a bit.

 

Anyway, it's odd - and, next to the Southern (at one time), the UP has done so much more than any other RR about steam locomotion in the US that I should really love it. But I don't.

 

I do know that I connect the "Union" Pacific's origins with a time that ended

badly for my part of the country. That's part of it. 

#3-Penn Cen.(logo)

#2-UP (no good reason, but do)

 

#1 most hated.

 And I'm talking real hate here!  

Conrail

They never got much of anything right.

 

Interesting topic, Paul.  Ya know, I used to be a big U.P. fan, having grown up in the late '40's and early '50s.  I remember traveling with my folks our to California along U.S. Hwy 30 (the former Lincoln Highway) in 1951.  I was about 15 at the time and for many miles we were right next to the U.P. main line.  I remember seeing tons of FEF's, Challengers and 4-12-2's.  Great images remain in my head.  But then from Cheyenne west to Utah, there were Big Boys.  Unbelievable power, sometimes double headed with Challengers; sometimes double headed with other Big Boys.  Never saw so much raw power on display.  And of course, we also saw U.P.'s passenger trains which at that time were also beautiful examples of modern day train designs.

 

So, the U.P. was always dear to my heart.  UNTIL, in 1955 and '56, my gorgeous, Milwaukee Road passenger trains, the Hiawathas, the Chippewas and the Olympians in their regal Orange and Maroon, sometimes with light gray, sometimes with black, suddenly became Yellow and Gray with Red stipes!   No!  No! No!  The U.P. was for those western trains along the plain states.  The Milwaukee was a railroad unto it's own! 

 

And that marked the end of the Milwaukee Road for me.   Shortly thereafter the Olympian Hiawatha was discontinued, replace by a Union Pacific train that started in Chicago, (not Milwaukee) and followed a foreign route up to the Pacific Northwest.  No more Cascade Mountains, no more electrified mainline, no more Montana scenery, no more access to Yellowstone through Gallatin.

 

So, yes for me:  The Union Pacific became that "hated"railroad for my continued railfan activities.  The Milwaukee also dropped it's maroon from the color scheme of even their freight engines and became just orange and black.  Blah!!!  Not my railroad any more and within 20 years the Milwaukee was completely gone.  So, like on my own railroad which represents the Milwaukee Road, my cut-off date is 1950.  The best colors, the last of steam including streamlined steam, all classes of electrics, and the most beautiful color scheme ever applied to a train:  Orange and Maroon, with liberal splashes of light gray and some black.  This is the way railroads were supposed to look.

 

Paul Fischer

The U.P. has the cheerful color yellow and at least the gray is a light shade, all touched of with a little red.

ATTRACTIVE!!!
Raslph

I'm not too happy with UP, mainly because of their practice of displaying the American Flag on the sides of their motive power and then allowing the units to become tattered and nasty looking.

 

If you're going to display the flag on equipment there is an inherent responsibility to keep it presentable. If you can't do that then the equipment should be repainted sans flag, pure and simple.

 

Jeff C

Gee, Conrail began operations in 1976 and actually began making money by 1981. 

 

Conrail's IPO in 1987 netted $1.65 billion to the Treasury. 

 

Given the ruins of the Penn Central that Conrail had to start with, it doesn't sound too bad to me.

 

Rusty

You can't spell stupid without UP!

If you are a person that cannot spell then you can.......

Not dislike maybe - in my book if its a railroad, it was okay.  But I do find it find it hard to muster an enthusiasm for the New York Central.  Its not that I dislike, just too many railroads and not alot of time to spend on all of them.

Right off the bat New Jersey Transit.  Can't tell you what a horrible ride it can be to travel on the New Jersey coast line.  The the LIRR.  It's a love hate relationship I have with it.

#1. Pennsy. The manufacturer's all seem to like a Pennsy prototype steam engine, then reletter them for other railroads.

 

#2. Amtrack. Governement waste at it's best, especially here in the midwest. A plane ticket is cheaper, quicker, and probably safer, not mention the airlines have a schedule using hours, not days. 

While I third the motion of TM Terry, and agree with "brr", but that is because so

bleeping much stuff is made for Pennsy and the NYC, and not enough else, and

I sneer at the megamergers, econobox diesels, and cabooseless rear ends you

can't even kick.  However, the "colorclash railroad", the orange and red...?? gimme

a break..orange and red?? is the one I dislike for its livery.  And then, didn't they take over Rio Grande?  No SOPAC cars per diemed over MY railroad!

 

I like most of them (haven't worked for any though...).  But if you had to force me, I'd vote for Guilford Transportation Industries.

 

Jon

Actually, my understanding is the Rio Grande took over the SP.

 

The Daylight scheme was second only to Armour Yellow and Harbor Mist Grey as far as the most Attractive paint scheme to ride the rails.

 

 The most over produced RR(in modeling terms) has got to be the PRR, AHM/IHC even committed the Ultimate Blasphemy of putting PENNSYVANIA on the tender of model Big Boys

 

Doug

..and they should have spent a little of the profit on new paint.  As a pre-teen at its inception, my first I thought when I heard the name Conrail, was it had to be a prison train(blue too), or later, the powers that be were pulling a "con job" with the blue paint bomb and lame name, and the "real stuff"  (ie, an exciting identity) would be released later. Never stopped hope'n it was all a joke. Only DT&I was worse for color, but they hadto be trying for ugly there .

 

 

 

The Nickel Plate.....

 

The lackawanna needed a railroad to chicago, they were buying stock in the nickel plate to achieve this. After the 1955 flood in eastern pa and the backlash from the nickel plate about a possible merger. This was the writing on the wall and the death merger with the erie. Out of all of the eastern railroads, the lackawanna never had to file for bankruptcy through the depression or had ruthless owners that ran the railroad into the ground to line their own pockets.

I have tried to like the Penn Central because it was a historic fact and the PC was a railroad in my immediate location. The Penn Central never made any sense though because they had too many close proximity, parallel tracks.

 

The Pennsylvania would have been able to merge with the Norfolk and Western quite easily.

 

The New York Central would have been able to merge with the Seaboard Coast Line and/or Louisville & Nashville easily.

 

The people who ran the Interstate Commerce Commission hated railroads to the extent that they would permit a railroad death mergers like this. They wanted the freight to be hauled all by trucks on the nation's highways.

 

Andrew

PRR hands down

BNSF and the PC, Both killed a beloved railroad, happily one died and hopefully the other one will die shortly also.

Scamtrak for all the usual reasons.

Conrail for the sheer ugliness of the blue and white. 

Jersey Central because New Jersey symbolizes to me everything I loathe about that part of the country - gangsters, crime, corrupt politics, high taxes.

Union Pacific because my good buddy who I work with on toy train museum projects is a retired employee of the SP and he hates them for the way they treated the SP employees when they took over the SP. 

Boy, it's tough to answer this.

 

I have always been a little biased against L&N for two reasons: the way the management suppressed the NC&StL; and I for the grey paint scheme and the removal of engine room windows and some headlight bezels on their E- and F-units.  But that's just pickiness, and the L&N was an interesting line.

 

As to real life experience, I would name the Missouri Pacific.  The pre-merger Union Pacific was a genteel company, very much oriented toward quality and consistency.  After the merger, almost all the UP officers went away, and they brought in a bunch of former Mop officers, most of whom were contentious and untrustworthy, about as easy to deal with as a pack of mean dogs.  To give the Mop its due, I liked the equipment - particularly before the Jenks blue era, and always believed that they were a boo-frills but decent maintenance outfit.

 

 

Really? Do you guys understand that it was Conrail that took over the Penn Central mess, turned it around and made it profitable? Conrail was one of the best run railroads in the world at the time. They made it such a hot property that CSX and NS BOTH wanted to buy it!

 

And some of you don't like the railroad because they had blue motive power? Wow.