Vintage 1970s Penn Central Railroad Mortgage Bond 📜 Historic Americana

What Happened to the Penn Central? 🚂 Penn Central 7% Series B Bond from the 1978 Reorganization

Size: 12" x 8" ~ Little to no wear.

This is a registered Series B General Mortgage Bond of The Penn Central Corporation, the paper that came out of the reorganization after the biggest railroad bankruptcy in American history. It has a green lathe-work border, a finely engraved allegorical vignette of classical figures around a great gear wheel, REGISTERED at both top corners, 7% DUE 1987 at each side, and the full text of the bond printed front and back.

🏷️ What's Printed on It

• THE PENN CENTRAL CORPORATION, ORGANIZED UNDER THE LAWS OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA
• SERIES B GENERAL MORTGAGE BOND, DUE DECEMBER 31, 1987 (SUBJECT TO EXTENSION TO DECEMBER 31, 1997)
• 7% DUE 1987 and CUSIP 707271 AF 9
• AUTHENTICATION CERTIFICATE, THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF BOSTON, Trustee
• The corporate seal: INCORPORATED PENNSYLVANIA 1846
• On the back, the Indenture of Mortgage and Deed of Trust dated as of October 24, 1978
• AMERICAN BANK NOTE COMPANY, the printer's line in tiny type on the face

These are issued bonds, registered to a holder, authenticated by the trustee and cancelled when they were retired, so each one carries its own paper trail: financial writings, stamps, punch cancellations and signatures are part of the life of the instrument, not damage.

📉 Out of the Wreck

The Penn Central Transportation Company was born on February 1, 1968, when the Pennsylvania Railroad took over its old rival the New York Central Railroad, and regulators made it take in the bankrupt New Haven too. On June 21, 1970 its board voted to file for bankruptcy, the largest corporate insolvency in U.S. history until Texaco in 1987, and on April 1, 1976 its working rail lines went to the federally owned Conrail.

This bond is part of how the creditors got paid. In 1978 the company was reorganized, and the old Pennsylvania Railroad company renamed itself The Penn Central Corporation, which is why the seal says Pennsylvania and 1846, the year the Pennsylvania Railroad was chartered. The Series A and Series B General Mortgage Bonds were issued under a mortgage indenture dated October 24, 1978. Beginning in 1981 both series paid 7% a year, they came due on December 31, 1987, and they were set to extend automatically for ten more years if the Valuation Case, the court fight over what the rail properties sent to Conrail were worth, hadn't been settled yet. That's the extension to 1997 printed right on the face.

🏡 Display

It's a great piece for any railroad fan or anybody who remembers the Penn Central crash, and it looks sharp framed in an office or a den next to a picture of Penn Station or Grand Central, the great terminals of the two railroads that made Penn Central.