Van Sweringen railroad holdings

In addition to

Cleveland, Ohio

owned a vast network of steam railroads.

History

The

Shaker Heights Rapid Transit

to downtown Cleveland.

By 1920 the Vans had decided they wanted control of other railroads, including the

Philadelphia and Reading Railway

.

The Vaness Company was

incorporated in Delaware on January 9, 1922 as a holding company to own all the other holding companies. The Clover Leaf Company was incorporated February 25 to own the Toledo, St. Louis and Western Railroad, and the Western Company March 11 for the Lake Erie and Western Railroad. The LE&W was bought for $3 million from the New York Central Railroad

on April 26. On July 1, 1923 and LE&W and Clover Leaf were merged into the Nickel Plate.

For the next several years, the Vans bought up the stock of the

financing

. The plan was opposed by many C&O stockholders.

On February 3, 1927 the Vans, along with the

Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway

. Four days later the Vans announced that they would make the C&O the centerpiece of their system, selling the Erie and Pere Marquette to them.

The Alleghany Corporation was incorporated January 26, 1929 in Maryland to hold the Vans' stock in the Nickel Plate, Chesapeake Corporation, Erie and C&O, as well as a partial ownership of the Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway (traded to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in March for the B&O's part of the W&LE; the Vans acquired the rest of it from the NYC at the same time). In April 1930 the Alleghany Corporation bought the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railroad and 46% of the Missouri Pacific Railroad, gaining a majority of the MoPac on May 13. The Hocking Valley Railway merged into the C&O April 30, 1930.

Due to the

Ball Brothers of Muncie, Indiana

.

The

Erie-Lackawanna Railroad on October 17, 1960. This left three pieces of the old system - part of the N&W, part of the EL, and the C&O. On August 31, 1965 the N&W and C&O announced a planned merger, with a holding company named Dereco to own the EL and several other lines. Dereco was incorporated March 1, 1968, acquiring the EL April 1. But the planned merger never happened. The C&O has since become part of CSX Transportation, the N&W part of the Norfolk Southern Railway, and the EL part of Conrail

, split between CSX and NS in 1998 (at which time most of the former Erie went to NS).

References

PRR Chronology Archived 2006-09-30 at the Wayback Machine
James C. Bonbright,
Gardiner C. Means, The Holding Company: Its Public Significance and Its Regulation, pp 253–262 McGraw-Hill, 1932.^{[ISBN missing}
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