Erie Lackawanna Railroad

[Mike Sheridan]

What does a railroad have to do with radio...nothing really.

I have been thinking about my Dad who worked in Buffalo for the Erie Lackawanna and the DL&W before the merger. Dad said he would support me in anything I wanted to do...as long as it wasn't the railroad.

He knew I loved radio, even though he passed away long before I ever opened the mic. I feel the same way about radio as he did about the railroad. When Erie management took over, they moved out of the grand old depot at the foot of Main Street for some old shacks used by the Erie. Dad made it to retirement but had to do a bunch of really tough jobs to hang on.

Maybe radio is going in the same direction as the railroad. I hope not.

 

[scooterodell]

If radio is headed the way of the railroads, look for a big government bailout to "save radio"! We'll consolidate all of the commercial operators into one subsidized company. "Conradio" will operate the best signals, and the rest of the signals will be, for the most part, abandoned, with a few sold off to local operators who want to continue service in smaller communities.

 

[OttoM]

If radio is headed the way of the railroads, look for a big government bailout to "save radio"! We'll consolidate all of the commercial operators into one subsidized company. "Conradio" will operate the best signals, and the rest of the signals will be, for the most part, abandoned, with a few sold off to local operators who want to continue service in smaller communities.

A government bailout of radio would be VERY interesting as it would be a bailout of a government-licensed industry - an industry unlike any other that's received a bailout already.

Here's a point: Maybe when license renewals come up people will begin to challenge them because they believe stations with severely reduced staffing "aren't operating in the public interest".

 

[Paul_Warren]

Government doesn't need to bail out radio. If the major groups all went under, the public interest would actually be served. Stations would be for sale on the courthouse steps for pennies on the dollar; real broadcasters could actually afford to buy them back from the strip-miners; there'd be no need to run staffless.

If government did want to help, how about finding a way to reduce the number of radio stations? Give the current owners a few years warning, then implement leases for the frequencies instead of letting private companies use them free of charge. Marginal stations would disappear, and the ones left could turn profits.

The idea that cramming more stations onto the dial creates diversity has turned out to be a crock. All it's done is pad the affiliate lists of Seacrest and Hannity, and make the AM band unlistenable at night.

 

[JustPastBuffalo]

This thread caught my eye because there's three generations of railroad service in my family. My grandfather worked for the Lehigh Valley, my uncle worked for the Lackawanna, my father worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad (the esteemed PRR in the Keystone logo, long before it became the Penn-Central) before he joined the Interstate Commerce Commission and moved the family to what was then the second largest rail terminus in America, Buffalo, New York (Chicago was #1.) My brother today works for Amtrack. I'm very proud of that lineage.

Bison yard, Frontier yard, ebeneezer yard... that's Buffalo. I remember as a kid, riding passenger trains up the Jersey coast (Perthhhhh Amboy, Rahhhhhh-way, Elizabethhhhh) to NYC and to Chicago, looping through the famed Horseshoe Curve in Altoona, PA.

Tuscan Red or Brunswick Green with gold pinstripes. The PRR. The famed Westinghouse diesel electric engines or the historic GG1 full electric engines were engineering marvels MADE IN THE USA when this country was known for making cars, ships and electronics for the world.

How many pictures of foreign radio, Medium or Shortwave installations have I seen where the transmitters were RCA, Gates (Quincy, Illinois), Collins or way back in the day GE, Westinghouse or Ratheon. Those were the days when Americans earned money from manufacturing goods and necessities, rather than pocketing commissions for credit default swaps, real estate upselling, ponzi schemes, bank arbitrage and manipulating derivatives that even investors like Warren Buffet don't understand.

 

[umtrr-author]

Ah, but the "Credit Mobilier of America" was a shell company that profited handsomely off the government dole while building the Transcontinental Railroad. It was quite the scandal.

However, unlike certain and recent past, ahem, enterprises, despite the corruption, something got built.

I certainly see the comparisons between railroads and radio in terms of the decline of employement; in the case of railroading, it's been going on a long time. I think a common thread, and not restricted to railroads or radio, is the deployment of technology to replace human labor.

For railroads, the steam to diesel locomotive transition, with the introduction of interchangable parts, resulted in thousands of lost jobs in maintenance of steam locomotives. Telegraph train orders were replaced by Centralized Traffic Control and many more jobs went away. Computerized back office operations made redundant large numbers of clerks.

For radio-- I am hardly an expert, but I guess voicetracking, computerized equipment, et al, and perhaps even the advent of the network itself? (Ah, but did not most network stations also have a reasonably sized local staff?) I suppose one could go back to the replacement of "studio orchestras" with recorded music spun by a single DJ.

If you don't already know, yes, I'm a rail enthusiast...

 

[SirRoxalot]

My grandfather worked on the NY Central. His missing finger was a tribute to his days as a brakeman before he ended up in the shop.

My father worked his way up from fireman to engineer on the DL&W (Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railway), better known as the Lackawanna. He was deeply involved as a union rep during the merger with the Erie. The Lackawanna lines through Elmira were abandoned, and the Erie route over the Portage High Bridge to Hornell became the other end of the line. As a 14 year old, I had the chance to make the trip with him - very much against company policy - and the view from the cab as you crossed that bridge was spectacular. I went in summer. It's an amazing view in any season - summer, fall, winter, or spring.

He watched as hard-won benefits were negotiated away during the birthing pains of Conrail. He was done before he had to climb aboard one of the ugly blue Conrail engines - thanks too many cigarettes, too many boilermakers, too much benzine, soot, and the rest of the pollutants belched out by diesel engines straining to move long lines of coal cars up long grades, or brake long lines of coal cars heading down long grades.

I was told that I could be anything I wanted EXCEPT a railroad man. Pretty much the same advice I'd give to anybody thinking of getting into the radio business at this point.

 

[umtrr-author]

Administrative note: Didn't mean for 90% of my previous post to be in bold, just the words "got built." Oopsie...

One uncle worked for the Jersey Central, another for the Long Island, my grandfather worked for the Railway Express Agency, and my great-grandfather "Dodger" worked for the Lackawanna until the day he failed to dodge. A number of people on my father's side also worked for the Lackawanna. One of my more distant relatives was actually a mid-level officer of the DL&W.

As far as I know, I'm the one in the family that got closest to a job in the radio business. And even that wasn't very close.

 

[qman]

Interesting stuff! Don't understand why it's featured on a radio board but, nonetheless, interesting.

 

[Mike Sheridan]

I was told that I could be anything I wanted EXCEPT a railroad man. Pretty much the same advice I'd give to anybody thinking of getting into the radio business at this point.

My point exactly...same here!

The one good thing the railroad guys had was a better than average pension. Radio with my ever changing jobs hasn't left me with much in the way of retirement funds! So if you see an old guy at Walmart greeting you, be nice, it might be me!