Thursday September 18, 2025
Soda House Auditorium
Registration via Eventbrite

Al Churella will return to Hagley for a talk based on the final volume of his landmark series. The Pennsylvania Railroad: Volume 3, The Long Decline, 1933-1968 concludes the story of this iconic transportation company, covering its long decline from the 1930s to its merger with the New York Central Railroad in 1968 to create the Penn Central. For his talk at Hagley, Churella will look closely at the end of his saga, the biggest merger in the history of American business that united the nation's two most famous railroads—the Pennsylvania and the New York Central. That union, a decade in the making, soon gave rise to the largest bankruptcy in the United States. More than the story of two failing railroads, the creation of Penn Central reflected the ills that plagued the railroad industry and the efforts of strong-willed individuals in business and government to reshape national economic priorities.

Al Churella is professor in the Department of History and Philosophy at Kennesaw State College near Atlanta. He is the author (among other works) of The Pennsylvania Railroad: Volume 1, Building an Empire, 1846–1917 and The Pennsylvania Railroad, Volume 2: The Age of Limits, 1917-1933. Churella’s talk is drawn from his new book, The Pennsylvania Railroad: Volume 3: The Long Decline, 1933-1968, that will be available for sale and signing by the author.