His later rise to prominence with the Pennsylvania earned him honorary college degrees from Waynesburg, Duquesne, Ursinus, Trinity, Marietta and Ohio.
[citation needed] In 1923, he was appointed freight movement director for the Pennsy's Central Region, with headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Behind the scenes, Ball noted, "The one-time unimagineable, unthinkable scenario of Pennsy and New York Central discussing survival by merging the two properties had begun."
[citation needed] Symes was not deterred, stating to the Interstate Commerce Commission during its Chessie system hearings in 1960 "that he did not oppose the Baltimore and Ohio/Chesapeake and Ohio merger and remained open to merging with the Central."
In fact, Joseph Daughen and Peter Binzen write that Symes was a surprise witness at the hearings, asked by the Chessie's management to show up and support their merger.
[citation needed] Financial pressures brought Perlman on October 25, 1961 to Symes and they agreed to take up where they had left off twenty-one months before.
[citation needed] ICC hearings and adverse reaction from the Department of Justice meant permission to merge would not be granted for an additional two years.
The New Haven, primarily a Boston to New York line, heavily engaged in money-losing long-haul and local passenger operations.
Perlman's comments on this proposed New England system were dubious at best, as he also testified to the ICC that the Boston and Albany was a "marginal operation that regularly lost money."
One of Shapp's key charges was that the new company would re-route freight traffic out of Pennsylvania and onto former Central routes through New York state.
[citation needed] Concessions by Penn Central management to employees (inclusion of the bankrupt New Haven, reinstatement of laid-off workers, job protection agreements) finally overcame objections from the Johnson administration's Department of Justice, which ended its opposition in November, 1967.
Adversarial management teams, poorly planned attempts to diversify away from railroading, failure to adopt a standardized computer system, years of deferred maintenance, federal regulation and federally subsidized competition (the interstate highway system, the St. Lawrence seaway), coupled with deindustrialization in the heart of the Penn Central's territory, quickly overwhelmed the company.
As a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation later noted, these reports "[ended] confidence in its commercial paper in the financial community."
Chase Manhattan Bank's own analysts' negative forecasts for Penn Central led the company to sell more than 134,000 shares on May 22, 1970.
Penn Central was rapidly using up its lines of credit and unable to secure additional funding for operations through private institutions.
Saunders approached the federal government for financing via United States Secretary of Transportation John A. Volpe, noting the company had reached its borrowing capacity.
Attempts by the Nixon administration and Penn Central officials on June 20 failed to change Patman's views; no federal funding would be forthcoming.
The following day, after a special board meeting, the Penn Central Transportation Company filed for Chapter 77 bankruptcy protection.
[citation needed] Penn Central struggled on for over five more years as managers and politicians sought solutions to the railroad problems of the Northeast.
In February Railway Age reported Penn Central suffered 1783 derailments in the first two months of the year, an increase of 878 percent for the same period in 1975.