A C&O/B&O memoir

Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Magazine, Sep 2003 by Howes, William F Jr

We B&O trainees wondered what it was like over on the C&O side. One of my earliest exposures to the C&O was Walter Tuohy arriving in his limousine to help decorate the B&O holly tree north of Baltimore for Christmas. The diminutive Tuohy jumped out of his car, hopped in an engineering department cherry picker, rose to the top of the tree, placed an ornament, waved, returned to his car and sped off. We of the B&O resumed our Christmas party!

By the Spring of 1965, we were demanding to see the C&O. The training director relented and packed us aboard the Pullmans of the George Washington en route to Huntington. My first observation: A ride over the C&O was smooth-just as Chessie had been claiming for years; whereas, the B&O was rough and I had bruises to prove it. The George dropped us in Huntington at 4:42 AM. Second observation: Huntington ain't no Baltimore (and you can take that however you wish!). We then began an intensive two-week tour of the C&O at Huntington, Russell, Raceland, and a new alignment of the Johns Creek Subdivision down on the Big Sandy territory. Third observation: Wow! So this is what money can buy! Whereas B&O wore its emotions on the soiled sleeves of its hard-working arms, C&O was a stoic, well-oiled machine. Fedoras and suits were still the dress code for operating officers on the C&O, while their counterparts on B&O had begun wearing sports jackets and venturing outside hatless. And whereas B&O still clung loyally to its Uncle Dan Willard, the flamboyant Robert R. Young was remembered with embarrassment on the C&O. Over here, M. I. Dunn, recently retired Senior VP Operations, and John E. Kusik of Finance, were the names held most in awe and, quite often, fear.

Organizationally, C&O appeared at times to actually be two railroads, with the former Pere Marquette lines still asserting a degree of independence under Regional Manager B. G. Nash.

Also, in the Spring of 1965, I had my first real working assignment. I went to Akron, Ohio, as Assistant to the Train Master for B&O's Akron-Chicago Division. The division also had a new Assistant Superintendent, Tom Jenkins, who I believe was the first field operating officer from the C&O to be assigned in B&O territory. We both learned that B&O took full advantage of the hours of service law-then at 16 hours-when working its field officers, whereas C&O officers often worked in 8- or 12-hour shifts.

In the Summer of 1965, I moved to the Industrial Engineering Department in Baltimore. Industrial Engineering had held the "power of the purse" on Jervis Langdon's B&O. Virtually every capital expenditure had to be reviewed and approved by the department. But Langdon left for the Rock Island in 1964 and "IE" was now part of a new C&O/B&O Planning Department that was orchestrating the orderly integration of the two roads, including development of their computer resources. Walter Tuohy was now president of the B&O, and Gregory DeVine president of the C&O. By early 1966, Mr. DeVine would be president of both roads and Mr. Tuohy their CEO.