THE WAVERLY ROUTE AND THE LACKAWANNA CUTOFF. During the era of decline of the loose-car steam railroad, the elimination of excess capacity became something between a survival strategy and an obsession. The title refers to two lines, the former the hill-and-dale mainline of the North British Railway between Carlisle and Edinburgh, which, like Rock Island's route between St. Louis and Kansas City, found the most difficult terrain while missing most of the cities inbetween; the latter a well-engineered line relocation from the New Jersey suburbs to Scranton, Pennsylvania. Both were closed under notorious retrenchments (the 1969 "Beeching Axe" chopped the Waverly, the 1976 Four-R (Conrail) Act led to the end of the Lackawanna Cutoff as well as most of the Erie-Lackawanna west of Meadville, Pennsylvania. Today, there is interest in restoring the Waverly so as to provide a way to move more freight while not interfering with the electric expresses on the East Coast and West Coast main lines, and in restoring the Lackawanna Cutoff to extend the suburban train services to Scranton (which is becoming the outermost suburb of New York) as well as to obtain more capacity for intermodal trains bound to the container ports of New Jersey and New York.

Universities seem bent on imitating the worst mistakes of railroads in the era of decline, including repackaging and slashing, and many seem doomed to learn the error of pursuing the downsizing fad too far. Consider Gilbert Hall on the Northern Illinois University campus. It was once a dormitory, right across a street from the art campus, and not far from physical education, engineering, and business. During the enrollment crunch of the early 1990s, it was converted to temporary quarters for administrators during the reconstruction of Altgeld Hall. After a number of cost overruns and delays, Altgeld has reopened as an office building, but there are still a few administrators in Gilbert. (They neither teach, nor do they do research.) It's easier to convert an office building that was once a residence hall back to a residence hall than it is to rebuild tracks that have been lifted, and headquarters contemplates making such a conversion.

I'm tempted to inquire about naming opportunities. How about Beeching Hall?