Re: (erielack) Re: Commuting and taxation

["Jim Guthrie" <jguthrie_@_pipeline.com>]

The story of New Jersey (and especially Hudson County) taxation of railroads 
is an integral part of the history of the DL&W, Erie, EL and other railroads 
that reached tidewater opposite New York City.  The huge profits -- mostly 
from anthracite (and as a necessity, seen always as "too xpensive" by 
consumers <g>), coupled with short-sighted management, made the railroads a 
sitting duck.

I realize it's far more complicated than railfans find interesting -- being 
content to leave the specific reasons for management decisions, track and 
structure removal, abandonments, and system-wide bankruptcies to the great 
mysteries of life, but a railroad historian will want to read, learn and 
inwardly digest all the gruesome details, so that the context of EL (its 
predecessors and neighbors) 1930-1976 can be fully understood.

This is one of those matters that separates the historians from the merely 
nostalgic.

Cheers,
Jim Guthrie
ELHS #1296


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