William Truesdale

William Haynes Truesdale (1851–1935) was an American railroad executive primarily known as president of the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad (DL&W) at the turn of the 20th century.

Born December 1, 1851, in Poland, Ohio, Truesdale was the oldest of Calvin and Charlotte (Haynes) Truedale's four children. In 1854, the family moved to Rock Island, Illinois, where, at age 17, Billy Truesdale got his first railroad job as a clerk with the Rockford, Rock Island and St. Louis Railway. In 1876, he was hired as passenger and freight agent for the Logansport division of the Terre Haute & Indianapolis Railroad, with offices in Terre Haute, Indiana On October 2, 1878, while living in Terre Haute, he married Annie Topping, the daughter of Lt. Col. Melville Douglas Topping, who was killed August 20, 1862, at the Battle of Richmond, Kentucky, while commanding the 71st Indiana Regiment. In 1881, Truesdale accepted a job as traffic manager of the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway and soon became vice president. In 1887, he was hired as the president of the Minneapolis and St. Louis Railway. Following a brief tenure in this role, Truesdale served as the first Vice President and General Manager of the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, a position he kept through the last decade of the 19th century.

Truesdale became president of the DL&W in March 1899, replacing an ailing Samuel Sloan. He immediately cemented his reputation as a relentless visionary by launching one of the most ambitious railroad modernization programs in American history. Until the dawn of the twentieth century, the DL&W — like most railroads dealing with adverse geography — generally followed the contours of the land when laying track. Steep climbs and long hours aboard a train remained commonplace.

Truesdale's efforts to rebuild his 900-mile system set the standard for U.S. rail construction. Heavier bridges and track were installed to permit heavier locomotives and cars to travel over them faster. Dozens of new stations were built. Many curves were straightened. Where conditions demanded, entire stretches of track were replaced by new alignments. One example was the Lackawanna Cut-off, a 28.45-mile (45.79 km) stretch of fast track with no grade crossings. Built to replace the DL&W's "Old Road", this enormous construction project involved huge amounts of cut and fill through the Pequest Valley of northwest New Jersey. It shortened the route by only 11 miles, but enabled trains to travel at speeds approaching 100 miles an hour. (The Cut-off was eventually decommissioned by Conrail and abandoned in 1983. The state of New Jersey later purchased the abandoned corridor and began reconstruction in 2011 to host New Jersey Transit commuter trains.) Under Truesdale's leadership, the railroad also constructed the Nicholson Cutoff north of Scranton, including the Tunkhannock Viaduct, the largest concrete bridge and one of the largest concrete structures in the world. The Tunkhannock Viaduct is still in use.

DL&W launched its Phoebe Snow marketing campaign, one of the best-known in American advertising, in 1902, shortly after Truesdale became president.

Although no biography of Truesdale has ever been written, some of his personality traits can be deduced from other sources. Photos of the DL&W president show a fastidiously dressed older gentleman with neatly cropped gray hair and moustache (later photos show Truesdale with white hair and a moustache). The operation of the Lackawanna during the Truesdale years suggests that a perfectionist visionary was at the helm of the railroad. Photos of the railroad shop buildings in Scranton from the 1910s show an impeccably kept area instead of a typically messy railyard. Railroad stations, which projected the railroad's image onto the local communities, were painted regularly and decorated with flower gardens during the warmer months. The stations with the best appearance received awards. Locomotive engineers were eligible for awards for keeping their steam locomotives clean and shining. Legend has it that Truesdale even demanded that the ballast on the right-of-way itself be neatly lined. Various photos from the era support that legend.

Truesdale retired as DL&W president in 1925, but remained chairman of the board until 1932. The last known photo of Truesdale in an official capacity shows the 80-year-old in Hoboken, NJ, with a straw hat and cane, posing with Thomas Edison and Truesdale's successor, Mr. Davis, just before the first electric train left Hoboken, a service that Truesdale had envisioned nearly two decades earlier. Truesdale remained in full retirement rather briefly, dying in Greenwich, Connecticut, on June 2, 1935, at 83.