He added with a smile that the slogan could be, “We go like the wind!” At one point, and in jest, Watkins said at a luncheon in the executive dining room in Cleveland’s Terminal Tower that the new company should be called First American Railway Transportation System. Osborn, said that since it was truly a 50-50 deal, neither the name “Chessie” nor “Seaboard” should be part of the new name.Įarly on, employees of both companies were asked through their company newspapers to suggest names and, if one was selected through that process, a prize would be awarded.įrom the outset, a variety of initials were kicked around as a point of departure such as CSCL Corp., C/SCL, CCL, CCS, and CSL. Watkins, then chairman of Chessie, and Seaboard’s chair, Prime T. And after the government approved the “merger of equals” (Chessie and Seaboard) in 1980, a new moniker became imperative. As a prelude to further merger, SCL in 1982 combined with longtime ACL affiliate Louisville & Nashville to form the Seaboard System Railroad Inc., which lasted less than four years.Ĭonfusing? You bet. Seaboard Coast Line was the 1967 combination of the Seaboard Air Line and Atlantic Coast Line railroads. It wasn’t until 1973 that C&O, B&O, and the B&O-controlled Western Maryland officially became Chessie System, Inc. After Chesapeake & Ohio acquired control of the venerable Baltimore & Ohio in 1963, the C&O was the dominant company, but the combined system was known simply, and informally as C&O/B&O. Why and how did the 50-50 merger of Chessie System and Seaboard Coast Line Industries in November 1980 result in those initials? Eliot wrote, “The naming of cats is a difficult matter, it isn’t just one of your holiday games.” The quotation is apt since a sleeping kitten, the famous Chessie, was the longtime mascot of the Chesapeake & Ohio Railway, one component of CSX. On the other hand, there are occasions where a railroad powerhouse takes over another carrier and retains its own name, such as Union Pacific’s takeover of Southern Pacific and several other railroads.Īnd then you have CSX. Along the same lines, there is Burlington Northern & Santa Fe, an amalgam of large and once-independent roads. There is, on the one hand, Norfolk Southern, a straightforward name for the affiliation of the Norfolk & Western and Southern railways.
Railroads, in particular, have grappled with that same question over the years – especially those railroads that are the products of mergers or the surviving company after a takeover. Quite a bit, apparently, and not only to the Bard.
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