Friday, June 18, 2010

New York Central cigar band logo. Used from 1959 until the Penn Central merger in 1968. From the internet.

New York Central Railroad cigar band logo. Used from the late 1950's until the 1968 merger with the Pennsylvania Railroad that created the Penn Central Railroad. From the internet.

One of My all time personal favorite railroad logos I recall seeing around the city of Chicago Illinois growing up during the 1960's and 70's era, was the New York Central Railroad's own "Cigar Band" logo.

This was the NYC's last corporate logo, and was in use from 1959 until 1968 when the New York Central and the Pennsylvania Railroad merged to become the Penn Central.
The New York, New Haven & Hartford joined the merger with Penn Central in 1969.

Unfortunately...things were so bad financially back then, that the Penn Central filed bankruptcy as early as 1970. The Penn Central became Conrail in April of 1976.
Several ex New York Central freight cars rolled around on the railroad mainlines with the cigar band logo many years after the fact as well.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I agree, the best railroad logo. My grandfather worked for the NYC, retired in 1964. He gave me a huge "sticker" of the cigar band logo, actually the decal they put on the locomotives. It was 5 feet across.

I had it stored for years, but when I went to get it to have it mounted, I discovered mice had eaten almost the whole thing. Apparently the protective paper covering the front contained a glue they liked.

Needless to say this was one of the biggest bummers of my entire life, It hurts me just thinking about it...