page_title: Alfred E. Perlman
section_title: New York Central and Penn Central
hierarchical_section_title: Alfred E. Perlman / New York Central and Penn Central
caption_attribution_description: English: Conferring outside Hearing Room of Interstate Commerce Commission in Washington, D.C., Alfred E. Perlman (right), President of New York Central, confers with Stuart W. Saunders, Chairman of Pennsylvania Railroad, about employee protection agreement.
context_page_description: Alfred Edward Perlman was a railroad executive, having served as president of the Penn Central Transportation Company, and its predecessor, the New York Central Railroad.
context_section_description: Modern Railroads noted Perlman was invited in the spring of 1954 to come to the New York Central Railroad by its chairman, Robert R. Young, to modernize and streamline its properties, as well as reorganize its personnel and operations. Young was the recent winner of a proxy fight to control the Central. Together, they worked on improving the Central's finances and reducing expenses. Young was considered a railroad visionary, but found the failing New York Central in worse shape than he had imagined. Unable to keep his promises, Young was forced to suspend dividend payments in January, 1958. Later that month, Young, who had a history of clinical depression, committed suicide. Perlman assumed Young's leadership role with the Central.
  For the next ten years, Perlman continued to work to strengthen and improve the Central in the face of ever-increasing air, automobile, sea and truck competition. Within six years, Perlman succeeded in reducing the Central's long-term debt by nearly $100 million; reduced its passenger service deficit from $42 to $24.8 million; and by 1959 had increased earnings to $1.29 per share: double that of 1958. Perlman's attempts to create economically viable passenger traffic led to the famous Jet Train of 1966, when a Budd Rail Diesel Car M-497 was mated to a General Electric jet engine. Running in Ohio, it set a speed record of 183.85 miles per hour (295.88 km/h).
  Commenting in 1962 on the integration of computerized networks on the Central, especially in the replacement of clerical duties and yard operations, Perlman said:
  "Like many other industries, we are using data processing machines to replace routine, repetitive clerical work. In addition, we have automatic machine tools, which perform their work faster and more efficiently without human intervention. We have maintenance-of-way equipment, which performs many laborious, complicated and delicate operations automatically. We are, in short, like most of industry, automating simple control functions that require only low-level human judgment.
  "Our electronic classification yards are one of the best examples of advanced cybernation at work in the railroad industry. For example, when a freight train leaves Toledo, Ohio, its consist is electronically stored in a memory system at Elkhart, Indiana, 100 miles away. When the train leaves Elkhart, it is pushed over a hump. When a freight car rolls down the hump, an analog computer goes to work to control the car's speed. The computer takes into account the car's weight, the kind of bearings, the condition of the lubricant in the journals, the direction and velocity of the wind, on which track the car must come to rest, how many curves it must go around to get there, and how far down that track it will be going before encountering another car. In the time it takes the car to move 150 feet down the incline, the computer has calculated the precise speed the car must leave the hump track in order to roll to its classification track and couple safely with the next car.
  "Metal shoes, operated by electronic instructions from the computer, press against the car's wheels to retard it to the correct speed. A radar-scanning device between the rails determines when the car has been brought down to the calculated speed and then releases the retarders. All the while, the electronic memory system is opening and closing switches to route the car automatically to the proper track."
  One of the largest yard projects was at Selkirk Yard outside of Albany, New York. Billed as a twenty million dollar undertaking circa 1966, the yard was rebuilt and automated, increasing capacity to handle 8,329 cars a day from 2,300. When completed in 1968, the Central spent $29 million, including $4 million for a diesel locomotive service facility. When opened, the rebuilt terminal was named the Alfred E. Perlman Yard.
  Perlman's modernization of the Central's physical plant also included paring down four-track main line routes to double track with centralized traffic control. On January 16, 1957, he was the first to push the button at the Eri
caption: Conferring outside Hearing Room of Interstate Commerce Commission in Washington, D.C., Alfred E. Perlman (right), President of New York Central Railroad, confers with Stuart W. Saunders, Chairman of Pennsylvania Railroad, about employee protection agreement.
exif: {}