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Frank Dewey, 2015 winner

Frank Dewey, 2015 winner

The award is given for an outstanding article or paper published one to three years before the year of the award. Frank Dewey, Greenville, SC, received the 2015 award for “The Navies of the Railroads that Became CSX,” a series of six articles in RABO Club News & Notes with #1 published in October 2013. RABO is an organization of retired officers of CSX and predecessor companies. Dewey joined CSX in 1969 and retired after 30 years as director of schedules in the Service Design Department. The next day, he started a second career with Wisconsin Central as superintendent of operations planning; after WC’s purchase by Canadian National, he was in charge of service design for CN’s operations in the United States until a second retirement in 2005.

Of the CSX predecessors, railroads with water operations included the C&O, B&O, ACL, SAL, AB&C, L&N, NC&StL, NYC, NYNH&H, WM, and RF&P. Their marine operations ranged from river boats that went across rivers or up and down streams; tug boats in East Coast harbors from New York City to Hampton Roads, Virginia; ocean-going sailing and steam ships going across the Atlantic and throughout the Gulf of Mexico to the Caribbean islands and South America, lake ferries carrying both passengers and rail cars across three of the five Great Lakes; packet boats on Chesapeake Bay, Long Island Sound, and from southern ports to points in Florida and Cuba; and harbor ferries in New York City. There are few remnants of any of the operations left, but the most famous are the Staten Island ferries of New York City formerly operated by B&O and now belonging to the City of New York.

Frank Dewey’s article about the navies operated by CSX’s predecessors obviously dealt with many more subjects that can be covered in this summary. Suffice it to say that the committee was very impressed with the depth of his knowledge and research and with his ability to track down many old photos of the involved vessels. We are pleased to present the David P. Morgan Article Award for 2015 to his six part article entitled “The Navies of the Railroads that Became CSX.” Lyle Key

The full citation appears in Railroad History, Spring-Summer 2016.