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Penn Central Railroad: Map, History, Logo

Last revised: September 23, 2026

By: Adam Burns

Penn Central was the railroad produced on February 1, 1968, when the Pennsylvania absorbed the New York Central. The New Haven was added at the end of that year. For twenty-nine months the combination was the largest privately owned railroad in the world. At 5:35 p.m. on June 21, 1970, the Penn Central Transportation Company filed for reorganization under Section 77 of the Bankruptcy Act, the largest corporate bankruptcy in American history up to that time. The trains kept running. Amtrak took the intercity passenger trains on May 1, 1971. Conrail took the freight railroad at 12:01 a.m. on April 1, 1976. For more about the company's locomotives, please visit the Penn Central diesel roster. This page detail's the PC and its collapse.

Penn Central E8A #4290 has train #54, the "Pennsylvania Limited," on Horseshoe Curve on a snowy February 23, 1969. Roger Puta photo.

On this page: At a glance · Why the rivals merged · February 1, 1968 · The New Haven · Service comes apart · Holding company and the cash · June 21, 1970 · Trustees · Amtrak and Conrail · Photographs · Sources

At a glance

The Penn Central mark. Author’s work.

The same mark in jade green. Author’s work.

Merger-day counts are the Hagley chronology of the Pennsylvania Railroad. Cash figures in the narrative are labeled as cash or as reported net loss, because those are different numbers. Information compiled September 23, 2026.

When I was in college, a few professors got as far as Penn Central and had to move on. The lecture was the right subject and the wrong length. Rush Loving, Jr.’s The Men Who Loved Trains had not been published yet. That book is the politics, at book length. The collapse itself has a shorter shape. It is a merger the Interstate Commerce Commission approved in 1966, a railroad that never became one railroad, a holding company that kept paying dividends out of borrowed cash, and a petition filed on a Sunday evening in 1970.

Why the rivals merged

The Pennsylvania lost money in 1946, the first annual loss in a history that had paid a dividend every year since 1848, and then went back to buying passenger cars. The New York Central was never as rich. Its board brought in Alfred E. Perlman in 1954. He finished dieselization, built yards, put younger men in the offices, and sold Flexi-Van, a container-on-flatcar service the Central called the Super Van. The Central’s public face was still the 20th Century Limited. The balance sheet was a different story.

Informal talks between the two companies started in September 1957. Perlman did not want the Pennsylvania. In 1959 he courted the Chesapeake & Ohio and the Baltimore & Ohio instead: coal from the C&O, markets from the B&O, and the Norfolk & Western, which the Pennsylvania controlled, left as the counterweight. The three presidents could not agree on who would run the combined company, and the talks died. Perlman came back to the Pennsylvania in October 1961.

They filed with the Commission on March 9, 1962. Stockholders of both companies voted for it that May. The ICC approved the merger on April 6, 1966. Approval was conditioned on taking the New Haven, passenger trains and all, and on the Pennsylvania giving up the Norfolk & Western. Rival roads sued. A three-judge court and then the Supreme Court made the Commission wait until the weaker roads—Erie Lackawanna, Delaware & Hudson, and Boston & Maine—had a path into the Norfolk & Western. The Commission issued a modified order on June 9, 1967. On January 15, 1968, in the Penn-Central Merger Cases, the Supreme Court affirmed. Justice Abe Fortas wrote the opinion. Two weeks later the railroads merged.

David P. Morgan had asked the uncomfortable question a decade early. In the January 1958 Trains, "NYC + PRR, What Does It Mean?," he looked at two heavily indebted railroads in a growing national economy and argued that regulation written for an older era had left them unable to meet competition the public was already subsidizing on the highway, the river, and in the air. He was describing the industry. He was not publishing the merger-day census.

February 1, 1968

At 12:01 a.m. on Thursday, February 1, 1968, the Pennsylvania Railroad Company absorbed the New York Central Railroad Company and became the Pennsylvania New York Central Transportation Company. At 12:04 a.m. the name Penn Central went up on Perlman’s business car, parked in Suburban Station in Philadelphia. Saunders was chairman. Perlman was president. The Pennsylvania named 14 directors and the Central 11. The first combined movement that day was a Pennsylvania locomotive taking a cut of Central auto-rack cars out of Detroit.

The plant, before the New Haven, was 19,286 route-miles, more than the Canadian Pacific’s 16,638, which made it the largest privately owned railroad in the world. Assets were over $4.2 billion. Annual revenues were over $1 billion. The locomotive fleet was 4,202 diesel and electric units, with 194,656 freight cars and 4,937 passenger cars. Headquarters was 6 Penn Center Plaza. Perlman preferred the old Central offices in New York, and the two men rarely shared a hallway.

Three weeks in. Former New York Central E8As, led by #4051, bring an eastbound train into Albany Union Station at Tower B on February 22, 1968. Norton Clark photo.

An official system map of the Penn Central Transportation Company, September 1969. The New Haven is already in. Author’s collection.

The New Haven

The New York, New Haven & Hartford had been in bankruptcy since 1961. Its trustees asked, in June 1962, to be included. The Commission’s approval of the big merger was conditioned on taking the whole New Haven, freight and passenger. On November 25, 1968 the ICC ordered the inclusion and set a price of about $145.6 million, most of it in securities rather than cash. Bondholders thought the property was worth more and sued. Judge Robert P. Anderson, who had the New Haven’s reorganization, had already warned that if inclusion was not ordered by January 1, 1969, he would entertain a motion to dismiss the case and stop the trains.

Penn Central took the New Haven’s rail assets at 11:59:59 p.m. on December 31, 1968. The operating date everyone used was January 1, 1969. The addition was 1,502 route-miles, 325 locomotives, 3,959 freight cars, and 660 passenger cars, plus about 23,000 daily commuters at New York and 5,000 at Boston. Tom Nelligan, writing in Trains a year later, made the point that still governs the story: the New Haven’s freight, not only its passenger trains, failed to pay its way. The price fight went on to the Supreme Court as the New Haven Inclusion Cases. The railroad was already inside Penn Central while the lawyers argued about what it had been worth.

Service comes apart

A merger is supposed to save money by closing duplicate yards, pulling up duplicate track, and reducing duplicate jobs. The Commission had taken more than six years, counting the court stays. Saunders and Perlman could not spend a pre-merger fortune on joint yards and a joint car-tracing system while the marriage might still be enjoined. They combined the operating departments on day one and hoped the clerks would catch up.

They did not. Pennsylvania men and Central men—red hats and green hats, in the nickname the crews used—did not share a rulebook, a routing code, or a map. Loving’s account has classification clerks facing thousands of new routing combinations and cars draining into the wrong yards. He records a car billed to Harrisburg that Central clerks, who had never worked a Pennsylvania terminal, forwarded toward Pittsburgh. The story is an illustration, not a car-tracing report. The result was not illustrative. Shippers could not find their freight.

In 1969 the failure piled up at Selkirk Yard, east of Albany, which was the Central’s modern hump and the gate to New England. Maine potatoes off the Bangor & Aroostook sat there long enough to lose a season. Farms that had shipped by rail stopped. The Bangor & Aroostook was pushed to the edge. It did not lose every other commodity forever, and it did not disappear that year. It lost the movement that had kept the railroad in the potato business.

Saunders had come from the Norfolk & Western as a lawyer and a negotiator, not as a dispatcher. The protective arrangements he accepted, on top of the Commission’s labor conditions, kept people on the payroll after the traffic that had justified the jobs was gone. On September 23, 1969 he told a Senate subcommittee that, over the previous two years, the Broadway Limited had averaged about 60 passengers a trip against a crew of more than 70. Perlman kept trying to run a railroad from New York. On August 26 Saunders told him he was finished as president. The board elected Paul A. Gorman, the head of Western Electric, on August 27. Gorman’s contract kept him at Western Electric for 90 days, so he took the chair on December 1, 1969. Perlman became vice chairman, with his New York office and his business car, and without the railroad.

Holding company and the cash

The operating breakdown is only half of the bankruptcy. On January 22, 1969 the board approved a holding company so the enterprise could, in Saunders’s words, diversify into a wide range of growth businesses. The next day Bevan was handed a cash forecast that ran from a $46 million positive balance in December 1968 to a $104 million deficit by the end of 1969. They built the box anyway. On October 1, 1969 the railroad was dropped into a subsidiary. On October 2 the old Penn Central Company was renamed the Penn Central Transportation Company, and the holding company was renamed the Penn Central Company. Real estate, Great Southwest, Arvida, and the rest sat with the parent. The losses sat with the railroad. The railroad’s stake in Executive Jet Aviation produced a separate fight at the Civil Aeronautics Board: a railroad was not supposed to control an airline.

Dividends continued. On August 27, 1969 the board approved the September dividend after Bevan had already reported a cash drain for the year of $295 million. On November 26, 1969 the board passed the fourth-quarter dividend. That ended the Pennsylvania’s dividend, paid every year since 1848. Passing it did not refill the treasury. The railroad was paying its bills with short-term debt, above all commercial paper sold through Goldman, Sachs & Co. Outstanding commercial paper reached about $200 million.

On May 27, 1970 Bevan told the finance committee what the cash had been doing. The cash loss for 1968 was $140 million. For 1969 it was $220 million. The first quarter of 1970 was another $100 million. Since merger day the company had borrowed $993 million and repaid $240 million. He said it still needed $263 million to get through the year. The reported net loss for the quarter ended March 31, the figure in the petition coverage, was $62.7 million. A cash loss and a reported net loss are not the same number. Both said the same thing about the direction. The SEC staff report later found that accounting entries had softened what the public statements showed, and that many of those entries produced no cash. Between the merger and the petition the cash drain was on the order of half a billion dollars.

Penn Central GP9 #7162 (ex-PRR 7162) is seen here at work in Hagerstown, Maryland on December 29, 1970. Marty Bernard photo.

June 21, 1970

Saunders had gone to Washington. On May 26 he told Attorney General John Mitchell, Treasury Secretary David Kennedy, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird, and White House aide Peter Flanigan that about $200 million of commercial paper had matured or was about to, that it could not be rolled, and that the railroad would have to file in early June. On June 8 the board relieved Saunders, Bevan, and Perlman. Gorman, who had been president for six months, became chairman and chief executive on June 9. He told reporters he would try to hold the commuter trains and the Metroliners and to get rid of the long-distance passenger trains. He would not say what he was doing about the cash.

On June 10, Deputy Defense Secretary David Packard said the Defense Department would support a guarantee of up to $200 million in bank loans under the Defense Production Act, through October 31, while Congress considered a larger railroad-loan program on the order of $750 million. The administration then decided not to give the guarantee. The board met on Sunday, June 21, 1970, and the Penn Central Transportation Company filed under Section 77 at 5:35 p.m. It was the largest corporate bankruptcy in the country up to that time. About $82 million of the commercial paper was still outstanding, held by 72 buyers who had treated the paper as short-term and safe. The SEC later estimated that, in the 30 days after the filing, the commercial-paper market ran off by about $3 billion, and that the Federal Reserve’s opening of the discount window kept that runoff from spreading further.

The war in Vietnam took the front pages. The question asked about the railroad was whether the passenger trains would still run. They did. Judge John P. Fullam of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania was designated to preside on June 23. In July he appointed four trustees: George P. Baker, Richard C. Bond, Jervis Langdon, Jr., and W. Willard Wirtz. Langdon was the railroader in the group, a former president of the Baltimore & Ohio. On June 29 Fullam authorized $50 million in trustees’ certificates so the payroll could be met.

Trustees

Section 77 is a reorganization statute, not a liquidation. Railroads were not allowed the ordinary corporate burial. The court stayed creditors, and the trustees stopped paying debt service, leased-line rents, and taxes. That was still not enough cash. Congress passed the Emergency Rail Services Act of 1970 on January 8, 1971. It let the Secretary of Transportation guarantee trustees’ certificates when essential service was about to stop and the certificates could not be sold without the guarantee. On January 15, 1971 Fullam authorized $100 million of those certificates.

Penn Central GG1s have a freight in tow through Zoo Junction in Philadelphia on August 7, 1974. The wire was still working. The company had been in court for four years. Doug Kroll photo.

The physical plant came apart behind the financial one. Deferred maintenance put large parts of the freight railroad under slow orders. Locomotives queued outside the shops because the shops could not keep up. In March 1973 Fullam gave the trustees until July 2 to file either a practicable plan of reorganization or a proposal to liquidate. He said it was highly doubtful the railroad could be allowed to continue, on the basis then in front of him, past October 1. The trustees told him they needed $600 million to $800 million of help over three years. Their report was that a conventional reorganization could not be made to work. Langdon, the operating trustee, later served as president. The federal freight solution is the Conrail page, which picks up the story when the filing had pulled the rest of the Northeast into court.

Locomotives wait outside the shops at Selkirk, New York, in April 1975. The estate was a year away from conveyance. American-Rails.com collection.

Amtrak and Conrail

The Rail Passenger Service Act became law on October 30, 1970. Amtrak, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, started May 1, 1971, and took Penn Central’s intercity trains. Commuter trains stayed on the railroad, and on the creditors. The Northeast Corridor electrics stayed in Penn Central paint until Conrail and Amtrak divided the work. The GG1 story from that handoff is the GG1 page.

Penn Central’s filing did not stay inside one company. Boston & Maine was already in court, from March 12, 1970. The Central Railroad of New Jersey had been in its last bankruptcy since March 22, 1967. The Reading filed on November 23, 1971. Hurricane Agnes in June 1972 put Erie Lackawanna in on June 26. Lehigh Valley and the Lehigh & Hudson River followed the same path. By 1973 more than half the Northeastern network was in receivership. The frame for that decade is the 1970s.

The Regional Rail Reorganization Act, the 3R Act, was signed on January 2, 1974. The Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act, the 4R Act, was signed on February 5, 1976. Conveyance to Conrail was 12:01 a.m. on April 1, 1976. What moved was the freight railroad. The Penn Central Transportation Company remained a corporate estate, with the retained real estate and the claims, and spent years in Fullam’s court arguing what the conveyed property had been worth. Deregulation of rates is a later statute, the Staggers Rail Act of 1980, on the Staggers page. Conrail’s first profitable year, 1981, and the sale of the government’s shares in 1987, belong on the Conrail page.

The routes did not vanish with the lettering. The Northeast Corridor is Amtrak’s. The freight mains west of the seaboard are CSX and Norfolk Southern, divided on June 1, 1999. Branches went to short lines. The black locomotives with the interlocking "PC" lasted, in dwindling numbers, well into the Conrail years.

Photographs

Penn Central E7A #4006 and other power at Michigan Central Station, about 1969. American-Rails.com collection.

Penn Central E8A #4274 awaits departure from Central Terminal in Buffalo, New York, with train #575, the "Buffalo Day Express," on July 20, 1969. Roger Puta photo.

Penn Central #4224 (ex-Pennsylvania E7A) and #4025 (ex-New York Central E7A) run light at 12th Street in Chicago on March 30, 1971. Former Pennsylvania coach yards are in the background. A month later, Amtrak took the intercity trains. Marty Bernard photo.

Worn Penn Central E8As and E7As, with E8A #4257 closest to the camera, at the 14th Street Coach Yard in Chicago on June 24, 1973. Marty Bernard photo.

Penn Central U25Bs #2685 and #2674 lead a southbound Erie Lackawanna freight through North Tonawanda, New York, on August 5, 1973. Doug Kroll photo.

Penn Central RS3s #5258 and #5282 are southbound with a Niagara Falls–Frontier Yard freight at North Tonawanda, New York, on August 14, 1973. Doug Kroll photo.

A pair of tired Penn Central F7As southbound at North Tonawanda, New York, on August 8, 1973. The railroad was in its third year of trusteeship. Doug Kroll photo.

Penn Central RS3s #5349, #5441, and #5340 head south on the Belt Line behind Central Terminal in Buffalo on August 12, 1973. Doug Kroll photo.

Penn Central RS3 #5318 (ex-New York Central #8318) with a transfer caboose along a highway the original note does not name, July 1973. American-Rails.com collection.

Penn Central F7s, led by #1749 (ex-New York Central), with a coal train through Cleveland, Ohio, in September 1975. Photographer unknown.

Four Penn Central F7s pass the former Pennsylvania depot in Ravenna, Ohio, with hoppers in the early 1970s. A 1969 Dodge Charger is in the foreground. Jerry Custer photo.

Former New York Central GP40 #3046 and Penn Central GP40 #3132 at Proviso, Illinois, on August 28, 1969. A 1965–66 Chevrolet Impala Sport Coupe is beside the tracks. Marty Bernard photo.

Penn Central GG1 #4852 and other power at Enola, Pennsylvania, on June 11, 1972. Marty Bernard photo.

Penn Central GG1 #4836, E44 #4416, and Baltimore & Ohio GP40 #4051 at Potomac Yard in Alexandria, Virginia, on January 14, 1972. Marty Bernard photo.

A pair of former Penn Central E7As, ex-Pennsylvania, at South Amboy, New Jersey, in July 1978. The freight railroad had belonged to Conrail since April 1, 1976. The units were still in Penn Central black. American-Rails.com collection.

Sources

• Penn-Central Merger and N & W Inclusion Cases, 389 U.S. 486 (January 15, 1968). Application filed March 9, 1962. ICC approval April 6, 1966. Modified order June 9, 1967.
• New Haven Inclusion Cases, 399 U.S. 392 (1970). Inclusion was a condition of the merger. Conveyance December 31, 1968. The price litigation outlived the conveyance.
• Christopher T. Baer, Pennsylvania Railroad technical chronology, Hagley Museum and Library, for 1968, 1969, and 1970. Merger-day plant and corporate names. Bevan’s May 27, 1970 cash figures, drawn there from the SEC record. Filing at 5:35 p.m. on June 21, 1970. Fullam designated June 23.
• Securities and Exchange Commission staff report, The Financial Collapse of the Penn Central Company, to the House Special Subcommittee on Investigations (1972). Commercial paper, Goldman, Sachs, the half-billion cash drain, and the runoff after the filing.
• The New York Times, June 22, 1970 (the petition, the withdrawn $200 million guarantee, the $62.7 million quarterly net loss) and March 7, 1973 (Fullam’s deadline and the trustees’ $600–$800 million estimate).
• Emergency Rail Services Act of 1970, Public Law 91-663, January 8, 1971. Fullam’s order of January 15, 1971, authorizing $100 million in guaranteed trustees’ certificates.
• David P. Morgan, "NYC + PRR, What Does It Mean?," Trains, January 1958. A warning, not a census.
• Tom Nelligan, "How PC + NH = PC," Trains, January 1970. The 1,502-mile addition, which the Hagley chronology also carries.
• Rush Loving, Jr., The Men Who Loved Trains (Indiana University Press, 2006). The operating-culture account, including the Harrisburg routing story. Paraphrased here.

Related reading

• Pennsylvania Railroad · New York Central · New York, New Haven & Hartford
• Penn Central diesel roster · GG1
• Conrail · Amtrak · The 1970s · Staggers Rail Act

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    Nov 04, 26 10:33 PM

    
    The three-mile Warrenton Railroad, from Warren Plains to the North Carolina county seat. Chartered January 28, 1871. First train November 8, 1884. Closed in 1985.

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40. Rio Grande Steam Locomotives (Since 1900)

    Nov 04, 26 11:40 AM

    
    Denver & Rio Grande Western steam locomotives built since 1900. Standard gauge quantity 435 and narrow gauge 48. Challengers, 2-8-8-2s, Mountains, Northerns, and the K-27, K-28, K-36, and K-37.

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41. Rio Grande Diesel Locomotives (All-Time)

    Nov 04, 26 11:39 AM

    
    Denver & Rio Grande Western diesel locomotives, each frame once. 554 units, from the 1941 NW2 through the 1990 GP60s. FT, F3, F7, and F9 sets are not counted again under their 1950 numbers.

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42. Rio Grande Railroad: Map, Logo, History, Rosters

    Nov 04, 26 11:34 AM

    
    Denver & Rio Grande Western history, from William Jackson Palmer and the October 27, 1870 charter through the Royal Gorge, the Moffat route, the California Zephyr, and Union Pacific common control…

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43. Lindblom Gift Expands the Fort Wayne Restoration Shop

    Nov 04, 26 11:14 AM

    
    Art Lindblom gave the Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society more than $1.4 million, its largest single gift, to expand the New Haven shop. The addition is planned for late 2026 and early 2027. A sepa…

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44. Design Contract Awarded for the Forest Park Branch

    Nov 04, 26 11:09 AM

    
    The Chicago Transit Board approved a design contract for about 13 miles of Blue Line track from the Illinois Medical District to the I-290 Bridge. The release summary calls it a $17 million contract…

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45. Kanawha River Railroad: The Norfolk Southern Lease Is Renewed

    Nov 04, 26 10:51 AM

    
    Kanawha River Railroad filed to keep leasing 309.45 miles from Norfolk Southern in West Virginia and Ohio. The second amendment is dated August 17, 2026. The Board has not set the date the exemption t…

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46. Short Line Center Awarded a $5.625 Million Grant

    Nov 04, 26 10:35 AM

    
    The American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association received a $5.625 million CRISI grant on October 20, 2026, for the Short Line Training Center. A 25 percent match brings the project to $7.5 m…

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47. Palestine and Rusk Track Rebuild Finishes Its First Phase

    Nov 04, 26 09:13 AM

    
    The Texas & Eastern Railroad has finished the first phase of a roughly $30 million track project between Palestine and Rusk. Phase I used a $13.4 million CRISI grant. Phase II, at $8.54 million, adds…

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48. Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx Get Subway Power Design

    Nov 04, 26 09:12 AM

    STV said on November 2, 2026, that MTA Construction and Development selected the firm to manage design of 10 subway substations and 12 circuit breaker houses in four New York boroughs. No contract pri…

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49. Chicago's Regional Transit Budget Goes Out for Comment

    Nov 04, 26 09:07 AM

    
    The Northern Illinois Transit Authority opened its first regional budget for comment through December 4, 2026. The proposal is $5.04 billion for 2027 operations and $9.73 billion in capital work throu…

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50. VIA Rail Finishes the Toronto Maintenance Centre

    Nov 04, 26 09:05 AM

    
    VIA Rail completed a four-year modernization of its Toronto Maintenance Centre on November 2, 2026. The Government of Canada invested $310 million. The shop supports 32 Corridor trainsets and will sus…

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