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Animats

There are names there that were once thought to be too big to fail.

- The Pennsylvania Railroad, the Standard Railroad of the World.

- The New York Central Railroad, their main competitor.

- Railway Express Agency, the FedEx of its day.

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"I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert... 'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!' Nothing beside remains." And I heard that story and said 'pfft, surely I can do better than that sucker.'" There are now two vast and trunkless legs of stone in the desert. one comically larger and more crumbled than the other. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

That's basically the story of the former Pan Am building, which sits right next door to and overshadows the former New York Central's Terminal building in Manhattan.

The building of the mighty airline overshadowed the majestic terminal of the formerly mighty railway, but then the mighty airline itself faltered, and the building now belongs to almighty finance...

And I heard that story and I said "pfft, surely I can do better than the last two suckers"...

Yes. Corporate ego trip movies, circa 1950.

Pennsylvania Railroad's "Progress on the Rails".[1]

New York Central's "The Big Train", featuring the CEO.[2] He's lobbying for deregulation and less federal funding for airports and roads.

Both include sections on the data processing systems of 1950.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8TM-LGDt5M

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZUXNs8ts9I

> once thought to be too big to fail

Relevant: Bureau of Labor Statistics data for American railroad jobs from 1947 to today: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES4348200001?amp%25253bdata...

If you want a sobering antidote to corporate hubris, read the Dow Jones Industrial Average for every year since it was founded.

Can you elaborate?

It's the "30 best companies" or such, and not a single one of the original companies is still on the list.

Of the original list (which is mostly railroads) I think only Union Pacific and Western Union still exist under their own name.

Are you thinking of the right list? The original DJIA components had multiple companies that still exist today such as General Electric and Domino Sugar. The only railroad company was TCI, but they were primarily in the steel business and have been US Steel for over 100 years.

Ah I was looking at the transportation average, the older one.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_Jones_Industrial_Average Is the correct link

The merger of NYC and the Pennsylvania - the Penn Central - was the biggest bankruptcy in US history before Enron. <i>The Wreck of the PennCentral</i> is a great business book on why.

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