Word: railroads
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...brick and hand-hewn oak that majestically held a Pennsylvania knoll just west of Philadelphia. It was a very old house-any architecture major could tell that-for down beneath the basement was a chamber as dark as the grave. This had been a depot on the Underground Railroad, a hiding cellar for northbound slaves. The landholders, generation after generation, had given over their rolling soil and their Quaker time to corn and cows, and for a very long while there it would seem the clock stood still...
...taken place about the time he learned to tie his shoes. There was Ruth May Sutton, who "used to be there in the school grounds at night, and the guys would run trains on her-six, seven, ten boys in a row"; and Madame Oop, who worked on the railroad and hung out "with another gay guy called Sis Henry." This unusual childhood led to a great deal of sexual confusion ("I just felt that I wanted to be a girl more than a boy"), a lot of guilt, but no apologies. Not then, not ever. The book is bursting...
...supersalesman, he saw no reason why Sears could not sell anything. He even set up a banking department with savings and checking services in 1899 that paid 5% interest on deposits, then folded the operation in 1903. But that was later. In 1886, then a restless 23-year-old railroad-station agent in North Redwood, Minn., Sears bought a consignment of gold-filled pocket watches that had been rejected by a local jeweler, resold them to other station agents at a $2 profit apiece and founded the R.W. Sears Watch Co. A year later he added a watch repairman, Alvah...
...effort to stem the tide of destruction, workers with the Southern Pacific Railroad maneuvered a large crane last week along a 27-mile causeway built of 50 million cu. yds. of rock, sand and gravel that divides the lake into north and south sections. The aim of the engineers: to begin carving a 300-ft. breach in the causeway, the final step in a three-month, $3.2 million project. If they are successful, water on the south side of the lake will fall about 9 in. during the next two months, lessening the threat of floods to Salt Lake City...
Penn Central. The 1968 merger of the Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads was the largest corporate consolidation up to that time. But management squabbles and a crushing debt load derailed Penn Central in June 1970, three days after the Nixon Administration rejected a company plea for $200 million in loan guarantees. Bankruptcy, however, turned out to be only an intermediate stop. To keep the railroad running, the following year Washington provided up to $125 million in guarantees and later absorbed the company's rail operations into Conrail, the Government-run railroad. Now a diversified manufacturer (1983 sales...