Since the topic is "The Race of the Century," here's another aspect that came to my aging mind:
- Were there any connecting tracks between the PRR and NYC at Englewood, and east of the drawbridges? These could have been justified as being interchange tracks for cars destined to and shipped from industries served exclusively by only one of the two railroads. However, in an emergency, such tracks could have been used to detour over the other railroad if, say, there was a big freight train pileup blocking all tracks of PRR or NYC (or if one of the drawbridges was out of service for some reason).*
- If -- if -- there were track connections, does anyone know of the 20th Century Limited or the Broadway Limited actually having detoured over the detested competitor's rails on the famously competitive stretch of track between Englewood and East Chicago? We're not talking about Penn Central or Amtrak here -- only the two flagship trains of NYC and PRR.
If that ever happened, there would certainly have been glee in one of the railroads' headquarters, while there was seething anger in the headquarters of the road which had to detour.
I know one thing: I would not want to be a member of a crew whose derailment caused such a detour to occur, nor would I want to be an officer or a supervisor on the Division which included that territory.
* Normally, if the NYC or the PRR became blocked, and there was time to arrange another way to detour, say, via B&O, Monon, Erie, or NKP, that might have been the preferred solution, but, if the westbound Broadway or Century had already passed the last location where that could be done, there may have been only one heartily despised solution. I'm only casually familiar with this territory, so that's why I am asking for experts to chime in.
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