RE: (erielack) Railroads "That Should Never Have Been Built

["Philip Martin" <martinpl3_@_earthlink.net>]

Richard Recordan says:  Corporations are formed to fill a percieved market
or need.  
Not always.  Quoting from the book "Vanderbilt's Folly," "In the 1870's and
1880's uncontrolled wildcat speculation and cut-throat competition among
the railroads in the northeast threatened to bankrupt all of them."  "New
lines were being created constantly by speculators for "nuisance value" in
the hope that competition would buy them out.
"One such nuisance line was created in 1882 when a group of speculators,
headed by Jay Gould, formed the New York, West Shore and Buffalo
Railroad....most likely...to sell out to the New York Central at a big
profit!"  (The original planing stage of that line.)
That desn't mean that the speculators were the only ones to benefit.  The
West Shore gave me employment fifty years ago.
PhilipMartin



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