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Talk:Bankruptcy of Penn Central

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Did you know nomination

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Vaticidalprophet (talk09:54, 8 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Created by Trainsandotherthings (talk). Self-nominated at 22:00, 13 August 2023 (UTC). Post-promotion hook changes for this nom will be logged at Template talk:Did you know nominations/Bankruptcy of Penn Central; consider watching this nomination, if it is successful, until the hook appears on the Main Page.[reply]

Length, reference and history verified. I am pleased that fate put me in the position to review this nomination ... it's sort of the completion of a multi-generational circle, I guess. My father, when I was but an infant, wound up working on this case early in his legal career; it would lead him to specialize in bankruptcy law (And on his end, his father, my grandfather who died several years before I was born, worked as a conductor on the Central a century ago).

I like ALT0 very much ... it's nice and punchy. But if we were to instead go with ALT1, I would suggest a reworded version for two reasons: First, to say that something "survives today" is redundant; if it survives, the "today" is understood. Second, the first part of the hook is wordier than it needs to be. And maybe we can combine the two hook facts if we tighten things up, and bold the part that will get clicks. So ...

ALT2: ... that eight years after the largest bankruptcy in American history at that time, the Penn Central railroad became an insurance company? Daniel Case (talk) 03:21, 30 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That is quite a funny coincidence. My only concern with the proposed ALT2 is that the company was not known as the "Penn Central railroad". Trainsandotherthings (talk) 15:39, 2 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Notability

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In light of today's abortive attempt at deletion, I respond with the following:

  • Penn Central history ended with bankruptcy. That was a cataclysmic event, both to the railroad industry and to the nation’s business community. The PC and its problems were the subject of more words than almost anything else in the railroad industry, everything from diatribes on the passenger business to analyses of the reason for PC’s collapse. [4]
  • The 100+ page report published by the SEC just on the bankruptcy
  • At the time, Penn Central was the sixth largest corporation in the U.S., and its bankruptcy was the largest in American history. Penn Central’s infamous failure remained the largest U.S. bankruptcy for more than 30 years until Enron eclipsed it in 2001. [5]

This is perhaps the least understandable deletion/merger attempt I have ever seen. Did you think about maybe doing a quick Google search first? Trainsandotherthings (talk) 00:56, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I completely agree; the article being too short is not a valid reason for deletion. Within five seconds (I'm not exaggerating), I found these sources on ProQuest:
The fact that I found these sources in five seconds (I didn't even include the various WSJ and NYT articles about what happened during the bankruptcy itself) means that the article could probably easily be 5x expanded and still be eligible for DYK. It should not have been nominated for AFD under these circumstances. – Epicgenius (talk) 01:35, 16 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]