Jervis Langdon, CEO of ailing railroads, dies at 99 - Obituary

Railway Age, March, 2004

Jervis Langdon, Jr., who served successively as CEO of three troubled Class I's during a tumultuous period of 20th Century railroading, died Feb. 15 in Elmira, N.Y., where he was born 99 years ago. A champion of consolidation, Langdon once said, "The greatest potential for an efficient national railroad system lies in fewer railroads--far fewer" (Railroad Mergers, Frank Wilner, 1997).

Langdon was president of Baltimore & Ohio when it was taken over by Chesapeake & Ohio in 1963, a transition in which he played an important role. He went on to become head of Rock Island, whose efforts to save itself through merger were thwarted by the ponderous, slow-moving bureaucracy at the Interstate Commerce Commission. After Penn Central went into bankruptcy, a federal judge appointed Langdon trustee of that railroad; he subsequently became its president (he was named Railroader of the Year in 1971). Langdon was a grandnephew of Mark Twain, who married Olivia Langdon.