RAILROAD HISTORY
    No. 187 Fall-Winter 2002
 
The Bachelors and the Brass Hat
 The unlikely genesis of a railroad empire
M.J. (left) and O.P. Van Sweringen with Alfred Smith (center).
It was an almost accidental meeting. Some time in 1913, three people got together in Cleveland for a short business deal—two obscure bachelor brothers who were in the suburban real estate business and an aggressive, up-from-the-ranks railroad executive. All the real estate developers wanted was a farm, which the railroader was selling for his widowed sister. They got it in five minutes, but then things took a strange turn. Some kind of chemical reaction occurred at that meeting. Out of it came a succession of events, at the end of which the two developers controlled 30,000 miles of railroad line stretching from the Atlantic Coast to Salt Lake City, and from Ontario to the Mexican border. It was the largest system under one management at the time and, given just a few more years, it might have reached coast to coast.
Railroad History is issued by The Railway & Locomotive Historical Society.
Published since 1921.

 

© 2004 Railway & Locomotive Historical Society