Churella

The dieselization of the Pennsylvania Railroad did not do any favors for the city of Altoona, according to Albert Churella, a history professor at Kennesaw State University, who penned a three-book series about the history of the railroad.

While giving a presentation Thursday night at the Altoona Railroaders Memorial Museum, Churella said the Altoona Works was once the “best in the world” at producing steam and electric locomotives, which were replaced by internal combustion, or diesel, locomotives on the Pennsylvania Railroad in the 1940s. There were many reasons for the change, he said.

Executives of the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. were initially reluctant to switch to diesel locomotives because they feared alienating coal producers. Criticism from financial analysts — like Isabel Benham — about the railroad’s use of coal, which became more costly to produce and caused pollution, accelerated with the acquisition of diesel power, Churella said.

“I’m not sure people really cared much about local pollution in Altoona because, after all, the Pennsylvania Railroad was the economic driver of the city. But in places like Pittsburgh they sure did,” he said. “Pittsburgh made it very clear that in no way the Pennsylvania Railroad was going to bring steam locomotives into the city anymore.”

Switching to diesel locomotives saved the Pennsylvania Railroad Co. from declaring bankruptcy in 1946, when the railroad reported a net loss for the first time, he said.

According to Churella, financial experts were stunned when they realized diesel locomotives could yield up to 40% of an annual return on investments, effectively paying for themselves within a few years.

“The word went out to eliminate steam as quickly as possible,” he said, adding the last two steam locomotives in regular service succumbed on Nov. 4, 1957.

He said the end of steam locomotive production, with steam locomotive maintenance subsiding, dealt “the final blow” to the city of Altoona and the Altoona Works, which had once accounted for 90% of the city’s employment.

“Even high-seniority employees could not count on steady work,” he said. “Instead they endured long furloughs hoping to be called back for a brief period of high-paying employment.”

Churella said the city’s population declined as younger individuals moved away to look for jobs elsewhere. Many of the older residents were laid off, but still hoped they might be called back to work, unwilling to give up their seniority and too old to start again elsewhere, he said.

Altoona resident Dean McKnight said the city’s people had a lot of pride in their railroad. He said people had stock invested in the railroad, which they considered to be like government bonds that would last forever.

“A lot of people don’t understand that it wasn’t as much somebody being dumb as it was that they had too much pride in what they were doing, and they just believed that nobody could do it better,” McKnight said.

“When they started laying off, it handicapped our economic opportunities because the wealth of the community disappeared. It took us a long time to recover from that,” he said.

Churella said he was approached in 2001 by the University of Pennsylvania Press in Philadelphia, who wanted him to write a book about the history of the Pennsylvania Railroad. The book became three separate volumes, he said.

The first book in the series, “The Pennsylvania Railroad: Volume 1, Building an Empire, 1846-1917,” was published in September 2012. His second book, “The Pennsylvania Railroad: Volume 2: The Age of Limits, 1917-1933,” was published last year by the Indiana University Press.

Churella is currently writing the final book in the series, which carries the story of the Pennsylvania Railroad from 1933-68, when it merged with the New York Central Railroad to form the Penn Central Transportation Co. The book is expected to be released later this year, he said.

Editor’s Note: Mirror Staff Writer Matt Churella covered this event for the Mirror, thinking it was interesting that the presenter, Albert Churella, shared his last name but was not known to the reporter. It turns out that Al’s father would have been Matt’s great-grandfather’s brother. That side of the family moved to Ohio, with Al now residing in Georgia, proving once again that it really is a small world.