Company
DissolvedThe Pennsylvania Railroad
Philadelphia · 1846 – 1968
Merged with the New York Central in 1968 to form Penn Central, which went bankrupt in 1970.
The Pennsylvania Railroad was chartered in 1846 to link Philadelphia with Pittsburgh, and therefore with the Ohio valley. Under J. Edgar Thomson and Thomas Scott it became something new: a professionally managed corporation, with departments, a line-and-staff structure, and managers who were not the owners.
For long stretches of the late nineteenth century it was the largest private employer in the United States, and often the largest corporation by revenue. The phrase 'the standard railroad of the world' was its own advertising. It was also roughly true of the operating methods.
Management as a job
Engineers, conductors, and shopmen did the visible work. The invention was the manager who supervised other managers, using written reports rather than walking the shop. The PRR's organizational chart was copied by later industrial firms because a railway is too large for one owner to watch. Altoona and Harrisburg held the shops. Broad Street Station in Philadelphia held the clerks. Both were the company.
The merger that failed
In 1968 the Pennsylvania merged with its old rival, the New York Central, to form Penn Central. The combination was a disaster of incompatible systems, deferred maintenance, and a holding company that had already been pulling cash out. Penn Central filed for bankruptcy in 1970, then the largest in American history. Conrail, a government-backed corporation, took over the freight operation in 1976. The Pennsylvania Railroad's name came off the locomotives.
The work it organized
- Conductor
- Division superintendent
- Shopman
- Traffic clerk
On the timeline
Related
- The British railway companiesReorganized