MORE PIECES OF THE PUZZLE.

Robert Sobel's The Fallen Colossus will provide a quick Book Review No. 3. Colossus came out after The Wreck of the Penn Central, which was journalism's second draft of history, and just before The Railroad Mergers and the Coming of Conrail, which in revision as Merging Lines sets the stage for the railroad renaissance chronicled in Main Lines and in The Men Who Loved Trains. Although these books cover many of the same events and many of the same personalities, the sequence of events is a bit different in Colossus than in Main Lines or Men Who Loved Trains. That Colossus suffers from a number of annoying proofreading slips might be an indicator of quality control difficulties elsewhere in the research.

Fallen Colossus does devote more space to corporate intrigues during the 1920s and 1930s that culminated in securities analyst Robert R. Young becoming a rail baron, first picking up the pieces of the Van Sweringen network and then taking control of the New York Central. These intrigues appear to be neglected in business history, compared to the maneuverings of the Vanderbilts and Morgans and Goulds (oh, my!) that conventional wisdom credits with midwiving regulation. There appear to be opportunities for additional research. I intend to reinforce this assertion in a review to follow.