08 April 1970: John Palmer Fishwick (1916-) is elected to serve as the tenth president of the Norfolk and Western Railway.

Fishwick succeeded Herman H. Pevler as president. Pevler, a former senior officer of the Wabash (leased by the N&W on 16 October 1964), is most famous to me as being responsible for the introduction of the blue livery with Dulux lettering. Mr. Fishwick is famous also for introducing the overall black livery with white "NW" lettering.

A Pennsylvania Railroad history site notes that Fishwick engineered a coup against Pevler, after Pevler suggested that a Chesapeake & Ohio man would become head of the combined C&O/N&W. Fishwick, reportedly having engineered the merger in the first place was not impressed, and thus got Pevler booted to the position of "Chairman", supposedly a meaningless promotion.

Of course, with the debacle occurring in the Northeast with the Penn Central, the C&O/N&W merger would be called off by the respective companies. C&O President Gregory S. Devine and Fishwick would announce this on 19 March 1971. Interestingly enough, Devine would retire as President within two weeks, replaced by the man who would make the Chessie System (and later CSX) a reality, Hays T. Watkins, Jr.

Fishwick would serve as President of the Norfolk and Western throughout the tumultuous 1970s, being replaced by Robert B. Claytor in September of 1981.

Congratulations (albeit 35 years later) to J.P. Fishwick, and thank you for your service. I found an article in something called The Roanoker that had caught up with Mr. Fishwick for a paragraph interview. Click here to read it and see a picture of Mr. Fishwick that has to be from the early 1980s. I am amused to see that the most clear 100-ton coal hopper belongs to CSX; I think the next one from the right is an N&W one in the Pevler-era "hamburger" livery.

Posted by: Country Pundit at 07:41 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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