Sublime

He cared most about freight, never frills; and he apparently never considered that newfangled automobiles, trucks, and hard-surfaced roads could challenge rails as the basic transportation infrastructure of America and of the world.

Much more important, his philosophy of railroading—with its emphasis on infrastructure and the primacy of freight—would live on, not only in these lines but in most others as well.

The idea for a railroad to supplant all of that originated in New York in the late 1840s, shortly before the news of California gold reached the East. The founders were three unlikely, dissimilar individuals, none of whom knew anything about building a railroad, even under favorable conditions. Henry Chauncey was a Wall Street financier. William He

Thus, Jim Hill’s attempt to merge and monopolize the three premier railroads of the Northwest crashed in failure. Perhaps, though, it is more accurate, considering his entire strategy—dating back to securing control of the NP and the Burlington in 1901—to term the attempt instead as a long-term success blunted by a final setback. For Hill was quite

Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.

Each quarter we try to study an admirable company and discuss it with our Operating Group managers and board members. We focus on high performance conglomerates that have demonstrated at least a decade of superior shareholder returns.

The company did its best to increase freight traffic, though, by building three huge ferries constructed especially to haul freight cars. These 360-foot ships—the Henry M. Flagler, the Joseph R. Parrott, and the Estrada Palma—were the largest train ferries in the world at that time, and were fitted with standard-gauge rails in their holds.

in June 1894 that a remarkable 192 U.S. railroads, owning fully one-fourth of the rail mileage in the country, had fallen into receivership. Among these were the wobbly NP, which went down in August 1893, the equally shaky UP, and the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe, now under the tutelage of Hill protégé Alan Manvel.