Penn Central commute.

Wednesday, July 15th, 2020

Biden pc

The Biden campaign released an ad a few days ago that talks about the importance of family. I particularly like it because it shows a guy commuting from Washington to Wilmington, Delaware daily to be with his kids. And in this picture, he’s shown with the pre-Amtrak metroliner, sporting that fine, fine Penn Central logo.

Yes, I say that a bit ironically, because the PC railroad was formed from the awkward merger of two huge northeast lines, the Pennsylvania and the New York Central, and it struggled under mountains of debt and a fair amount of mismanagement and inability to make early computer systems work together.

But it was also the rail line that ran during the early 1970s down the hill from our house in Grandview Heights, Ohio, so it’ll always be, in that sense, the “home team” for me.

And that logo and their font—based on the italic version of Microgramma—is also a classic of the era.

We see you there, Joe.