New York Central System – Vintage Railroad
New York Central System by Leslie Ragan, circa. 1930’s
The New York Central System Railroad, also known as New York Central or The Central, was a railroad operating in the northeastern and midwestern United States. Headquartered in New York City, the New York Central was a large railroad, and it had several subsidiaries whose identity remained strong in local loyalties.
In broad geographic terms, the New York Central proper was everything east of Buffalo plus a line from Buffalo through Cleveland and Toledo to Chicago (the former Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway). NYC included the Ohio Central Lines (Toledo through Columbus to and beyond Charleston, West Virginia) and the Boston & Albany Railroad (neatly defined by its name). The Michigan Central Railroad was a Buffalo-Detroit-Chicago line and everything in Michigan north of that. NYC’s Grand Central Terminal in New York City is one of its best known extant landmarks.
The Decline of the New York Central System
The New York Central, like many U.S. railroads, declined after the Second World War. Problems resurfaced that had plagued the railroad industry before the war, such as over-regulation by the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), which severely regulated the rates charged by the railroad, along with continuing competition from automobiles. These problems were coupled with even more formidable forms of competition, such as airline service in the 1950s that began to deprive the NYC of its long-distance passenger trade. The Interstate Highway Act of 1956 helped create a network of efficient roads for motor vehicle travel through the country, enticing more people to travel by car, as well as haul freight by truck. The 1959 opening of the Saint Lawrence Seaway adversely affected NYC freight business. Container shipments could now be directly shipped to ports along the Great Lakes, eliminating the railroads’ freight hauls between the east and the Midwest.
The NYC also carried a substantial tax burden from governments that saw rail infrastructure as a source of property tax revenues: taxes that were not imposed upon interstate highways. To make matters worse, most railroads, including the NYC, were saddled with a World War II–era tax of 15{7e4c09e4caec0a44217f929ca51f7dedb640eda8843948493d87a342a85d2b82} on passenger fares, which remained until 1962, 17 years after the end of the war.
In 1968 the NYC merged with former rival Pennsylvania Railroad to form the Penn Central, which went bankrupt by 1970.
