PWA assistance to our nation's railroads: How massive was it?

Above: Part of a larger story from the Knoxville Journal (Knoxville, Tennessee), July 22, 1934, p. 3. Image from newspapers.com, used here for educational and non-commercial purposes.

PWA money for railroad repairs, construction, modernization, and employment

During the New Deal, the Public Works Administration (PWA) loaned $200 million to 32 American railroad companies. That's about $4.1 billion in 2021 dollars. 

These New Deal funds created the following:

* 195 new locomotives, and another 1,928 locomotives repaired.

* 11 new and complete streamline trains (i.e., locomotive + articulated passenger cars; see, e.g., the Flying Yankee).

* 303 new passenger cars, and another 947 cars repaired.

* 24,170 new freight cars, and another 40,877 cars repaired. 

* New or improved track beds, railroad bridges, and railway structures.

* Tens of thousands of tons of rail.

* Electrification of the Pennsylvania Railroad's New York to DC passenger route.  

* Elimination of dangerous grade crossings (grade crossings are where train track and automobile roadway intersect at the same level - thus creating an accident hazard).

* 100,000 railroad workers back on the job.

* Improved railroad earnings (after several dismal years).

* 100 industries other than railroads benefited.

* A financial return for the government, i.e., "We the People" (for example, through the sale of bonds as collateral against the loans).

(Main sources of information: (a) "PWA Aided By Gain On Rails," Scripps-Howard Newspaper Alliance, in The Oklahoma News (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma), November 22, 1936, p. 4; (b) C.W. Short and R. Stanley-Brown, Public Buildings: A Survey of Architecture of Projects Constructed by Federal and Other Governmental Bodies, Between the Years 1933 and 1939, With the Assistance of the Public Works Administration,Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939, p. 653; (c) Public Works Administration, America Builds: The Record of PWA, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1939, pp. 188-189; (d) Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, The Story of PWA in Pictures, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1936.)

"The railroad construction and improvement program is one of the brightest chapters in the history of PWA. It is a complete demonstration of the theory of public works as a recovery measure."

--Harold Ickes, PWA Administrator and U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Associated Press article, in "Sale of PWA Securities," Lincoln Journal Star (Lincoln, Nebraska), February 14, 1936, p. 1.