Western Pacific's Fight Against the Odds | America's Underdog Railroad | History in the Dark
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- Опубліковано 9 лип 2024
- Western Pacific was a Class I railroad founded in 1903, but you wouldn't know that by looking at them. Compared to others, WP was rather small, but they never let that stop them from moving forward with their unique Feather River Route. Despite constant setbacks and resistance from competitors stopping their success, they soldiered on well passed the point many other lines had failed completely. Their story only ended when one of their rivals, Union Pacific, saw the potential of WP's territory and purchased them outright.
0:00 - Intro
1:02 - The Backstory
6:14 - The Never Ending Battle
12:32 - Success in a Foundering Industry
15:34 - Ending and Legacy
"The Western Pacific Railroad (reporting mark WP) was a Class I railroad in the United States. It was formed in 1903 as an attempt to break the near-monopoly the Southern Pacific Railroad had on rail service into northern California. WP's Feather River Route directly competed with SP's portion of the Overland Route for rail traffic between Salt Lake City/Ogden, Utah, and Oakland, California, for nearly 80 years. The Western Pacific was one of the original operators of the California Zephyr passenger line."
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#history #truestory #documentary
I'm really glad you're continuing this series. For too long it's felt like American railroad history effectively peters out after WWII with the popular narrative of "and then cars and airlines meant the decline of the railroads, something something something Amtrak, maybe Conrail, and here we are today." Only High Iron Productions has dipped into this era, and that was only with the history of BNSF. Please do keep showing how these fallen flags fell.
i f your intrested in post WW2 US r ailways AmtrackGuy365 is p retty good tho
Wester Pacific was bought out by Union Pacific, which also bought Southern Pacific.
Such a Irony, both Competitors now under one Big Railroad.
a great big rollin railroad to be specific
@@yeoldeseawitch In 1960 Santa Fe attempted to take control of WP through buying its stock (SF,WP, and GN operated a train between LA and the PNW using the Beiber line that competed with the SP-UP route to the PNW). SP attempted to thwart SFe's intentions by buying WP stock and acquiring WP. The fight for control went to the ICC, which by the mid 60s decided that neither line could buy WP-thus WP remained independent.
A huge reason why Union Pacific bought Western Pacific was the fact the Feather River Canyon line has a surprisingly low gradient of circa 1%. That mean UP didn't need to run long strings of locomotives to go uphill eastbound like what Southern Pacific had to do over Donner Summit; in fact, UP aggressively upgraded all the tunnels on the Feather River Route to accommodate doublestack container traffic by the middle 1990's.
Not a big reason. SP purposely diverted traffic away from UP onto the Cotton Rock/Sunset Route during the late 70's which seriously affected the traffic levels on the Overland Route. UP had long desired a direct connection to the Port of Oakland. If they could've gotten the SP route into Oakland, they absolutely would've preferred it for how fast it was in comparison.
So I’m a business consultant in real life and I have had a lot of experience working with, and becoming friends with, some of the most business savvy business owners of larger sized small businesses. I have to say that after watching these documentaries that you sir are just as smart as they are. They all share this same weird unique characteristic of having a quick wit while being able to see everything around them from a 20,000 foot view. This makes them fantastic at making poignant analysis of complex issues and identifying problems while taking in account how each moving part effects another. I just wanted to tell you that while watching your videos I realized you possess the same knack and are highly intelligent. It’s so refreshing too watching your short documentaries because it doesn’t feel like someone just narrating a slide show while reading a companies biography from Wikipedia. Kudos to you dude.
Hey, thank you so much! That means a lot!
I'm a successful SMALL business owner and that was a hell of a compliment!! I too like how you explain things and the fact you're always upbeat. I could take a lesson in the latter.
WP didn't have snow or grades but floods and washouts were substantial problems.
btw for those wondering 60 million is $2,051,181,818.18 now in 2023. that is totally insane
Alfred would’ve been quite disappointed to see no steam engines for scraping
"Aw shucks, bought my chainsaw to work for nothin!"
😂
@@Sassymouse88 meanwhile the 6 already preserved western pacific steam locomotives do the Take the L emote from the safety of their museums.
You fail to mention Mike Flanery, WP's last President. It was he who with the rest of WP management who took WP private in an LBO, and then sold the WP to UP. He also saved who's last F units and donated them to museums.
WP never bought any 6 axle diesel locomotives. They did utilize the 1% grade to their benefit (except the Highline; which had 2.2%). They ran a lot of perishable and canned goods east. You can thank Sacramento Northern and Tidewater Southern for generating that traffic.
I was hoping for Alfred E. Perleman to appear in this and I'm glad you did enough research to include him. I see he still has his chainsaw.
You forgot to mention a big factor in the UP merger; the WP was incredibly reliant on agriculture and the car industry. When those industries went into decline in the late 70s to early 80s, WP knew it would be in big trouble. The Ford plant in Milpitas, CA that justified an entire separate yard was on the verge of closing and it was by far WP's biggest customer. WP also had the aforementioned ATSF-WP-BN Inside Gateway partnership to compete with SP and was another huge source of traffic. With ATSF and SP considering a merger, that was also a serious issue for the railroad. The last issue that the railroad had faced was serious union action that was deeply affecting the railroad. It knew from 1980 onward that it was doomed and so the UP merger was more of a bailout. The UP chose WP for access to the Port of Oakland, as well as to counter SP moving traffic away from the Donner line to the Sunset/Cotton Rock lines.
Interesting History of the WP. Very well done
It wasn’t a catastrophic failure, but instead a rousing success story.
Factual and fascinating as always 👍
WP was tied to the Rio Grande-RG owned stock in the WP until RG's bankruptcy. The RG connection at Salt Lake City allowed the WP to compete for transcontinental traffic via a WP-RG-Burlington routing...which were also the partners in the California Zephyr.
You should make a video about the Reading RR in this series, also you could make on about Louisville & Nashville
PS. Love all your videos, keep it up👍
On the subject of WP's CTC system, they used almost the exact same hardware as their chief rival, SP, namely H-2 searchlights from US&S, even mounting heads on two-head signals _seven and a half_ feet apart, just like SP (most railroads used six-foot spacing; and GN, for one, used five). Their rules comprised a whopping 11 signals and didn't use any three-head aspects. They were also painted turquoise for a long time, too, because a carload of turquoise paint derailed once, and the customer just sold the stuff to them. So they used it...
Ah, my beloved Old Wobbly!
The 3 Pacific Railroads:
Southern Pacific, Western Pacific, and Northern Pacific.
While the Southern Pacific and Western Pacific were consumed by Union Pacific, Northern Pacific was taken over by Burlington Northern which merged with Santa Fe to become BNSF.
This series is interesting, are you planning a video on great northern?
I mean you mentioned them in this video and a few other videos
I think we are all here for 14:17
GOOD!
Don't know what these guys are watching but sounds cool👍
Good job with this video. I liked the "positive" flare.
Pearlmann back!Luckily he came after Wp diesliazed(quite early in 1955) so 8 WP STEAM ENGINES SURVIVE!
shhhhhhh dont say that his descendants will come to destroy them while everyones asleep 🤣
@@Rocker-1234not if my combat shotgun, AR-15, Katana, and my bow and arrows have anything to do about it!
@@harrisonofcolorado8886have a snickers.
@@marcleslac2413 Why?!
Technically...............Western Pacific was eligible to join amtrak in the spring of 1971. As a matter of fact the company's original intention was to revive the California zephyr with the original route as it was more populated than the espees. However it was 528 mission st themselves that refused to take any meeting with amtrak whatsoever. As they didnt want to have to buy into to a system that would compete for track space. Also most of the Cz rolling stock had been sold off or given to the CB&Q. So they would've had to contribute their f units or pay a percentage of their losses to join. Not to mention the whole train off experience with the government and ICC left a very bad taste in their mouths when it came to reaching hands across the aisle in Washington. The only attempt came on March 12th of that year. Which they were straight up ignored. However they couldn't prevent amtrak from using their route as a emergency detour and this has happened several times. 1973, 74, 75.....2006??? And 2012. Those are just the ones I know off the dome.
I thought Amtrak's original plan was to revive the Zephyr on the original route up to SLC, then past SLC, it would go to Ogden where it would then continue on the Espee to Oakland.
Excellent video!!!
Tell me do you think you could cover the Gainesville Midland Railway? It was one of the last steam-powered short lines in my area and the railroad and most of the steam engines that ran on it are still in existence today
I Miss Western Pacific
me too…
14:45 Little did Alfred Perlman know that at least five WP steam engines made it into preservation.
“BOYS WHERE ARE THOSE STEAM. ENGINES. YOU PRESERVED!
@@Imsorrywat"I WANT THAT STEAM ENGINE"
How -HOW did I know Albert Perlman was going to show up in this video?
Could you do a couple videos on the history of the Nickle Plate Road. And the Lima Locomotive works?
Being bought because you being great value to the table is entirely different than being bought to settle debts at a discount.
HMM THIS VID IS 1 JOUR EARLIER THAN USUAL
Probably because most of the US just went forward an hour for Daylight Savings Time.
Just a thought with April fools day coming up . Maybe doing a video on railroad games , both board and computer?
He lol yeah
Chant after me - Southern Belle, Southern Belle, Southern Belle...... and so ad infinitum!
the story of the wprr would make for a good underdog movie
Could you talk about the success of Union Pacific next?
Al after 1972 Became CEO of the WP
Denver and Rio Grande Western when?
Do the Denver and rio grande western please
Why do we watch history in the dark?
1 the history.
2 the MEMES!!!
If you do another one of these do the old NS please no one give this old railroad a thought when it comes to old class 1’s. (It was bought by Southern in 1974)
What are your favorite F Unit locomotive railroad liveries?
I would love to see you do a detailed video on the Wabash railroad.
Could you possibly talk about how Southern Pacific and Santa Fe were going to merge, but that didn't happen?
How about continuing this fallen flag series with the other constituent railroads of Union Pacific like C&NW, D&RG, et al...
Just for added suspension my phone frose at 14:40 😆
If those knuckleheads at PC would have listened to Pearlman and not been at war with each other, they may have at least lasted longer than they did. But hey, look at the bright side: we got Conrail.
Can you do a video of KCS
Ah, History, are you ready for your dose of..... Pearlman!
Good old Montgomery Burns the perfect meme for the greedy robber train barons of then and now. 👍
Espees route over the mountain will always be superior to the WPs because the steep grades and slow speeds with those grades only range for about 40 miles from Colfax to the summit. After that it was all down hill and out across the high desert, Espee could get to that high speed desert a lot faster to
14:41 “All of our steam engines are gone”. My guys, y’all just donated Nos. 94 and 334 a few years before Perlman came along. We’re y’all *trying* to lie to him?
Do the Missouri Kansas Texas railroad also known as the Katy
There are five surviving western pacific steam locomotives
The EsPee never got to SLC, they went to Ogden, also it is pronounced Goold, not Gold, good video though
L&N video ?
anyone know if hes covered that dude from the new york railroad in detail? i already despise him but i lowkey wanna see how much bad that muppet got lol
Look up his video on Penn Central. Pearlman was actually a rather competent executive.
@@carldebellis7310 he may have been competent but imo he was still wildly unreasonable. everyone can understand modernisation but the lengths it sounds like he went with new york railroad atleast to kill off steamers even when people offered to buy the locos from him is a d**k move. especially when the only reasoning ive heard given was he wanted the scrap money. cause if that was the reasoning why refuse to let people take the locos off his hands? its literally standard practice even in those times for preservationists to atleast offer scrap value to the railroads for them. not to mention even the couple times people requested he donates an engine... its like 5-15k... im sure even back then 5-15k was absolute pennies to a railroad.
which is kinda the reason i was hoping there was a video dedicated to him or whatever... cause atleast with brittish rail while they were incredibly unreasonable towards heritage until recent times, atleast with them from my understanding it wasnt really thier choice. the government was up thier a** to modernise so they just went crisis mode to do what they could. pearlman just seems like the joke of him having a vandetta against steam is more real than a joke. wouldve been interesting to see an insight into wtf was going through his mind ya know? especially considering alot of other railways were alot more open to preservation than him. but him? the only engines that survived his bs were either sold before modernisation or i think a couple were hidden?
hell look at the incident with metro and that one dude... they had zero reason to give a damn, or care outside of settling with the dude so they could build thier new workshop, but even they tried to stop it being scraped and tried to get permission to just move the thing on his behalf and held thier employees who screwed the whole thing up accountable.
@@Rocker-1234 Donating an engine is not 5k-15k, it was a logistical nightmare and you still need to pay people to do it. Railroads that chose to do it did it at the request of a city who wanted a park engine for publicity sake. Men like Perlman or Southern Pacific's D.J. Russel are ruthlessly efficient men who were also arguably the best of their railroad's leadership. They weren't publicity people too. If you read up about Russel, you would know SP under him had very negative publicity due to the purposeful decline of their passenger trains, yet the 1960-1972 era of the SP was its greatest. The same could be said about Perlman during his tenure on the WP.
Also if you are referring to the GTW 5629 incident, that was the locomotive owner's fault, he was repeatedly told to move his engine over the course of several years but chose not to. It was HIS property intruding on THEIR land preventing the construction of necessary facilities. Richard Jensen was given so many offers to purchase his engine so it could be moved but he was known for being litigatious and was probably trying to get money in a court battle.
Hah. Im the 69th like. Nice.
15:07, Penn Central exploding.
It's pronounced Clie-o, please.
Alfred E. Perlman is as much of a running gag as British Rail
You might want to re-listen to video from 14:55 on. Perlman was an excellent railroad operations and business man. From his D&RGW days to his aggressive tenure at NYC, where he pushed modern operations such as the flexi-van (trailer/container precursor), etc and only the ill-fated PC fiasco he opposed derailed his efforts to re-envigorate the Central.
WP benefited from his expertise to become more desirable to UP. His reputation amoung practical railroaders, during a period when much of railroading was struggling just to survive, probably not far off from SRs Brosnan.
how young are you
Do 5 of the best trains ever part 8 with more british rail and you have a war with british rail and before that you say THATS IT BRITISH RAIL THIS CALLS FOR WAR and add the F-units
Hm, the Peaks versus the F-units - you're on!
The western pacific be like to UP and SP before being bought out
: 🖕😐🖕
Gould = goo ld, not gold.