The Penn Central Merger

On February 1, 1968, the New York Central and Pennsylvania railroads merged into the Penn Central. Neither of the predecessor railroads had been profitable, but they hoped the merged railroad could be made profitable by eliminating duplicate services. Today, many historians believe that they were right–after all, ConRail became profitable before it was divided between Norfolk Southern and CSX–but the Penn Central was victimized by bad management.

Click image to download a 1.0-MB PDF of this menu.

None of that shows on today’s or yesterday’s menus, which offered truly first-class meals for a first-class train, the Broadway Limited. Yesterday’s had swordfish, pork chops, shrimp and mushrooms Newburg, Cornish hen cordon bleu, prime ribs, and broiled sirloin steak. Today’s offered chicken ambassador, seafood combo, veal cordon bleu, prime rib, and sirloin steak. There was no a la carte; all of these meals came with plenty of trimmings.


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