The Pollen Analysis Circular was a mimeographed publication that maintained communications among scientists working on either side of the Atlantic Ocean during World War II and aided the early development of the field of palynology. It was initiated by Paul Sears in 1943 and published somewhat regularly until May 1949 (No. 17), by which time scientific meetings had again become feasible. Publication was made possible by contributions and the efforts of many individuals at various institutions. It provided comments and discussion on the field, progress reports on research projects, lists and addresses of researchers in the field, bibliographies, obituaries, and other news items. A final issue, No. 18, was printed in January 1954.

History
The international scientific cooperation on which the field of palynology depended was interrupted by the onset of World War II. The Pollen Analysis Circular was a response to increased handicaps to travel during the late stages of World War II. Because palynology was a well established trans-Atlantic field by the time World War II broke out, workers in the United States, Britain, and Germany in particular, had difficulty maintaining contact with one another. The Pollen Analysis Circular allowed researchers in the United States to maintain contact with one another and maintain publication lists that had, until then, been published by Gunnar Erdtman as "Literature on Pollen Statistics and Related Topics".

The first issue of the Pollen Analysis Circular was dated May 5, 1943 and published by Paul B. Sears (Oberlin College). Subsequent issues were generally edited by Sears, sometimes in cooperation with L.R. Wilson.

In January 1945, the Pollen Analysis Circular was renamed the Pollen and Spore Circular to more accurately reflect its scope. After 1954, the Circular was incorporated into the Micropaleontologist, soon renamed Micropaleontology, published by the American Museum of Natural History. The last issue of the Pollen and Spore Circular (#18) was edited by Calvin J. Heusser and announced the fusion, indicating that "the spore and pollen section will constitute four to six pages in each issue and contain essentially the same material" as in the Pollen and Spore Circular.

The final issue also included abstracts from the First Palynology Conference (February 25, 1953), held at Yale University as well as correspondence from researchers working as far afield as Düsseldorf, Lucknow, and Indianapolis.

Highlights
It was in the pages of the Pollen Analysis Circular that the field of pollen analysis was given the modern name of palynology based on correspondence in issues 6, 7, and 8 between H.A. Hyde and D.A. Williams, who are credited with coming up with the name palynology, along with contributions by Ernst Antevs, Paul B. Sears, A. Orville Dahl, and L. R. Wilson.

References

External links
The Pollen and Spore Circulars, online version provided by R. Scott Anderson. Retrieved 2011-12-18.

Palynology
Defunct journals
Biology journals
Academic journals established in 1943
Publications disestablished in 1954
English-language journals

Pollen Analysis Circular


The SEPTA Regional Rail system  is a commuter rail network owned by SEPTA and serving the Philadelphia metropolitan area. The system has 13 branches and more than 150 active stations in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, its suburbs and satellite towns and cities. It is the sixth-busiest commuter railroad in the United States, and the busiest outside of the New York, Chicago, and Boston metropolitan areas. In 2016, the Regional Rail system had an average of 132,000 daily riders  and 118,800 daily riders as of 2019.

The core of the Regional Rail system is the Center City Commuter Connection, a tunnel linking three Center City stations: the above-ground upper level of 30th Street Station, the underground Suburban Station, and Jefferson Station. All trains stop at these Center City stations; most also stop at Temple University station on the campus of Temple University in North Philadelphia. Operations are handled by the SEPTA Railroad Division.

Of the 13 branches, six were originally owned and operated by the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) (later Penn Central), six by the Reading Company, while one was constructed under SEPTA in 1985. The PRR lines terminated at Suburban Station; the Reading lines at Reading Terminal. The Center City Commuter Connection opened in November 1984 to unite the two systems, turning the two terminal stations into through-stations. Reading Terminal was replaced by the newly built underground Market East Station (now Jefferson Station). Most inbound trains from one line continue on as outbound trains on another line. Some limited or express trains, and all trains on the Cynwyd Line, terminate on one of the stub-end tracks at Suburban Station. Service on most lines operates from 5:30 a.m. to midnight.

Lines

Each former PRR line, as well as the Airport Line, was once paired with a former Reading line and numbered from R1 to R8 (except for R4), so that one route number described two lines, one on the PRR side and one on the Reading side. This was ultimately deemed more confusing than helpful, so on July 25, 2010, SEPTA dropped the R-number and color-coded route designators and changed dispatching patterns so fewer trains follow both sides of the same route.

Former Pennsylvania Railroad lines
 Airport Line: terminates at the Philadelphia International Airport. This line is geographically on the PRR side of the system, however service did not begin on the line until 1985.
 Chestnut Hill West Line: terminates in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia.
 Cynwyd Line: terminates in Cynwyd and operates weekdays only. Until 1986, trains continued on to Ivy Ridge station in northwestern Philadelphia.
 Media/Wawa Line: terminates at Wawa. Until 1986, trains continued on to West Chester. SEPTA restored service to Wawa, approximately three miles (5 km) west of the previous terminus at Elwyn, on August 21, 2022.
 Paoli/Thorndale Line: trains terminate at Malvern or Thorndale; additional rush hour trains terminate at Bryn Mawr or Paoli. From April 2, 1990 to November 11, 1996, trains continued on to Parkesburg. Service was extended to Thorndale on November 22, 1999. In March 2019, SEPTA announced a plan to extend service to Coatesville, approximately three miles west of Thorndale, once a new train station is constructed.
 Trenton Line: terminates in Trenton, New Jersey. This line uses Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, and offers a connection at Trenton to New Jersey Transit's Northeast Corridor Line for continued service to New York City.
 Wilmington/Newark Line: terminates in Wilmington, Delaware, with some weekday trains continuing to Newark, Delaware. The Delaware Department of Transportation (DelDOT) subsidizes Delaware service. This line runs entirely on Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.
Former Reading Company lines

 Chestnut Hill East Line: terminates in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia.
 Fox Chase Line: terminates in the Fox Chase section of Philadelphia.
 Lansdale/Doylestown Line: terminates at Doylestown. On weekdays, approximately half of the local trains terminate at Lansdale while the remainder of the local trains, and some expresses, continue on to Doylestown.
 Manayunk/Norristown Line: terminates at Elm Street in Norristown.
 Warminster Line: terminates in Warminster.
 West Trenton Line: terminates at the West Trenton station in Ewing, New Jersey.

Stations

There are 154 active stations on the Regional Rail system (as of 2016), including 51 in the city of Philadelphia, 42 in Montgomery County, 29 in Delaware County, 16 in Bucks County, 10 in Chester County, and six outside the state of Pennsylvania (two in Mercer County, New Jersey and four in New Castle County, Delaware). In 2003, passengers boarding in Philadelphia accounted for 61% of trips on a typical weekday, with 45% from the three Center City stations and Temple University station.

Rolling stock

SEPTA uses a mixed fleet of General Electric and Hyundai Rotem "Silverliner" electric multiple unit (EMU) cars, used on all Regional Rail lines. SEPTA also uses push-pull equipment: coaches built by Bombardier, hauled by ACS-64 electric locomotives similar to those used by Amtrak. The push-pull equipment is used primarily for peak express service because it accelerates slower than EMU equipment, making it less suitable for local service with close station spacing and frequent stops and starts.

As of 2012, all cars have a blended red-and-blue SEPTA window logo and "ditch lights" that flash at grade crossings and when "deadheading" through stations, as required by Amtrak for operations on the Northeast and Keystone Corridors. SEPTA's railroad reporting mark SEPA is the official mark for their revenue equipment, though it is rarely seen on external markings. SPAX can be seen on non-revenue work equipment, including boxcars, diesel locomotives, and other rolling stock.

The Silverliner coaches were first built by Budd in Philadelphia and used by the PRR in 1958 as a prototype intercity EMU alternative to the GG1-hauled trains. Similarly designed cars were purchased in 1963 as the Silverliner II, in 1967 as the Silverliner III, and the Silverliner IV in 1973.

The Silverliner V, a more modern version of the railcar was introduced in 2010. A total of 120 cars were purchased for $274 million, and they were constructed in facilities located in South Philadelphia and South Korea by Hyundai Rotem. The cars were built with wider seats and quarter point doors for easier boarding or departing at high-level stations in Center City. The Silverliner V cars represent one-third of SEPTA's regional rail fleet.

In late 2014, and the beginning of early 2015, SEPTA began the "Rebuilding for the Future" campaign that will replace all deteriorated rolling stock and rail lines with new, modernized, equipment, including ACS-64 locomotives, bi-level cars, and better signaling. The ACS-64 locomotives for push-pull trains arrived in 2018.

SEPTA passenger rolling stock includes:

Electric multiple units

Push-pull passenger cars

Locomotives

Electrification

All lines used by SEPTA are electrified with overhead catenary supplying alternating current at 12 kV with a frequency of 25 Hz. The system on the former PRR side is owned and operated by Amtrak, part of the electrification of the Northeast Corridor. The electrification on the Reading side is owned by SEPTA. The Amtrak system was originally built by the PRR between 1915 and 1938. The SEPTA-owned system was originally built by the Reading starting in 1931. The two systems are not electrically connected. After construction of the Center City Commuter Connection, the two electrical systems now meet near Girard Avenue at a "phase break," a short section of unpowered track, which trains coast across. The gap is necessary because the two electrical systems are not kept in synchronization with each other.

The entire system uses 12 kV / 25 Hz overhead catenary lines that were erected by the PRR and Reading railroads between 1915 and 1938. All current SEPTA equipment is compatible with the power supplies on both the ex-PRR (Amtrak-supplied) and ex-Reading (SEPTA-supplied) sides of the system; the "phase break" is at the northern entrance to the Center City commuter tunnel between Jefferson Station and Temple University Station.

Yards and maintenance facilities
SEPTA has four major yards and facilities for the storage and maintenance of regional rail trains:
 Frazer Yard, in Frazer, Pennsylvania, along the Paoli/Thorndale Line; services push-pull train sets.
 Overbrook Maintenance Facility, near Overbrook station on the Paoli/Thorndale Line; Services EMUs
 Powelton Yard, adjacent to 30th Street Station
 Roberts Yard, adjacent to Wayne Junction

History
SEPTA was created to prevent passenger railroads and other mass transit services from disappearing or shrinking in the region. Passenger rail service was previously provided by for-profit companies, but by the 1960s the profitability had eroded, not least because huge growth of automobile use over the previous 30 years had reduced ridership. SEPTA's creation provided government subsidies to such operations and thus kept them from closing down. For the railroads, at first it was a matter of paying the existing railroad companies to continue passenger service. In 1966 SEPTA had contracts with the PRR and Reading to continue commuter rail services in the Philadelphia region.

The Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Company
The PRR and Reading operated both passenger and freight trains along their tracks in the Philadelphia region. Starting in 1915, both companies electrified their busiest lines to improve the efficiency of their passenger service. They used an overhead catenary trolley wire energized at 11,000 volts single-phase alternating current at 25 Hertz (Hz). The PRR electrified the Paoli line in 1915, the Chestnut Hill West line in 1918, and the Media/West Chester and Wilmington lines in 1928. Both railroads continued electrifying lines into the 1930s, replacing trains pulled by steam locomotives with electric multiple unit cars and locomotives. PRR electrification reached Trenton and Norristown in 1930. Reading began electrified operation in 1931 to West Trenton, Hatboro (extended to Warminster in 1974) and Doylestown; and in 1933 to Chestnut Hill East and Norristown. The notable exception was the line to Newtown, the Reading's only suburban route not electrified. While the PRR expanded electrification throughout the northeast (ultimately stretching from Washington, D.C. to New York City), the Reading never expanded electric lines beyond the Philadelphia commuter district.

By the late 1950s, commuter service had become a drag on profitability for the PRR and Reading, like most railroads of the era. Commuter service requires large amounts of equipment, large numbers of employees to operate equipment and station sites, and large amounts of maintenance on track that see extremely heavy usage for only six hours a day, five days a week. Meanwhile, the rise in automobile ownership and the building of the Interstate Highway System chipped away at the steady patronage as population in the suburbs grew. When the Philadelphia suburbs were small towns, people lived close enough to a train station to walk to and from the trains. When the suburbs expanded into what had been fields and pastures, the trip to the station required an automobile, leading commuters to remain in their cars and drive all the way into the city as a matter of convenience.

Both railroads shed a few minor money-losing routes, but more major pruning efforts ran into public opposition and government regulation. Ending a major line involved hearings before the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), the predecessor to the Surface Transportation Board, which moved at a glacial pace and was capricious in the matter of approval, requiring one railroad to continue operating a local train on a route covered by four other trains while allowing another to discontinue a well-patronized train that had no competing lines. In response, the railroads made commuting unpleasant for passengers by neglecting the upkeep of equipment.

Faced with the possible loss of commuter service, local business interests, politicians, and the railroad unions in Philadelphia pushed for limited government subsidization. In 1958, the city enacted the Philadelphia Passenger Service Improvement Corporation (PSIC), which consisted of a partnership with the Reading and PRR to subsidize service on both Chestnut Hill branches. This was not enough to reverse the deterioration of the railroad infrastructure. By 1960, the PSIC assisted with services reaching as far as the city border in all directions. PSIC subsidized trains to Manayunk on the PRR's Schuylkill Branch to Shawmont on the Reading Norristown line, to Fox Chase on the Reading Newtown line, and as far as Torresdale on the PRR's northeast corridor to New York City. Subsequently, the city purchased new trains. The success of the PSIC subsidy program resulted in its expanding throughout the five-county suburban area under the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Compact (SEPACT) in 1962. In 1966, SEPTA began contracts with the Pennsylvania Railroad and the Reading Company to subsidize their commuter lines.

Still, the subsidies could not save the big railroads. The PRR attempted to stay solvent by merging with the New York Central Railroad on February 1, 1968, but the resulting company, Penn Central, went bankrupt on June 21, 1970. The Reading filed for bankruptcy in 1971. Between 1974 and 1976, SEPTA ordered and accepted the delivery of the Silverliner IVs.

Conrail
In 1976, Conrail took over the railroad-related assets and operations of the bankrupt PRR and Reading railroads, including the commuter rail operations. Conrail provided commuter rail services under contract to SEPTA until January 1, 1983, when SEPTA assumed operations.

The end of diesel routes

The Regional Rail SEPTA inherited from Conrail and its predecessor railroads was almost entirely run with electric-powered multiple unit cars and locomotives. However, Conrail (the Reading before 1976) operated four SEPTA-branded routes under contract throughout the 1970s, all of which originated from Reading Terminal. The Allentown via Bethlehem, Quakertown, and Lansdale service was gradually cut back. Allentown–Bethlehem service ended in 1979, Bethlehem-Quakertown service ended July 1, 1981, and Quakertown–Lansdale service ended July 27, 1981. Pottsville line service to Pottsville via Reading and Norristown, also ended July 27, 1981. West Trenton service previously ran to Newark Penn Station; this was cut back to West Trenton on July 1, 1981, with replacement New Jersey Transit connecting service continuing until December 1982. The final service, Fox Chase-Newtown service, initially ended on July 1, 1981. It was re-established on October 5, 1981, as the Fox Chase Rapid Transit Line, which then ended on January 14, 1983.

Most train equipment was either Budd Rail Diesel Cars, or locomotive-hauled push-pull trains with former Reading FP7s. The diesel equipment was maintained at the Reading Company/Conrail owned Reading Shops, in Reading, PA.

The services were phased out due to a number of reasons that included lack of ridership, a lack of funding outside the five-county area, withdrawal of Conrail as a contract carrier, a small pool of aging equipment that needed replacement, and a lack of SEPTA-owned diesel maintenance infrastructure. The death knell for any resumption of diesel service was the Center City Commuter Connection tunnel project, which lacks the necessary ventilation for exhaust-producing locomotives.

Service from Cynwyd was extended to a new high-level station at Ivy Ridge in 1980, and the 52nd Street Station closed in the same year.

SEPTA takeover and strike

The transition from Conrail to SEPTA, overseen by General Manager David L. Gunn (who later became President of the New York City Transit Authority and Amtrak), was a turbulent one. SEPTA attempted to impose lower transit (bus and subway driver's) pay scales and work rules, which was met by resistance by the BLE (an experiment was already in place on the diesel-only Fox Chase Rapid Transit Line, which used City Transit Division employees instead of traditional railroad employees as a bargaining chip). As the January 1, 1983 deadline approached, the unions stated they agreed to work even if new union contracts were not in place by the new year. SEPTA had spent most of December 1982 preparing riders for the likelihood of no train service come the new year. Even with the unions' offers to continue working, SEPTA insisted that a brief shutdown of service would still be necessary, arguing that it would not know until the eleventh hour how many Conrail employees would actually come to work for SEPTA. In addition, SEPTA claimed that these employees would have to be qualified to work on portions of the system unfamiliar to them.

A lawyer who regularly commuted from Newtown on the Fox Chase Rapid Transit line filed a class action lawsuit against SEPTA to force the agency to keep trains running. The judge who heard the case, while agreeing that SEPTA probably would not be able initially to operate a full schedule, ordered the agency to keep as much train service running as possible. This resulted in limited service after January 1, 1983 on all the Reading lines and the heavily patronized PRR Paoli line. Full service was gradually restored over the next several weeks.

The unions then surprised SEPTA on March 15, 1983, by going on strike, still without contracts, in an action timed to coincide with an expected City Transit Division strike. At the time, the City Transit Division was chafing at SEPTA for discontinuing diesel service on the Fox Chase Rapid Transit Line on January 14, 1983, as personnel were paid higher salaries for traveling a considerable distance to operate trains based in Newtown. SEPTA, however, settled with the transit union shortly before its strike deadline, a move that rail unions took as a betrayal. The rail unions had hoped that with both the railroads and City Transit shut down, the unions could extract whatever settlement they desired. The railroad strike lasted 108 days, and service did not resume until July 3, 1983, when the last holdout union agreed to a contract to settle from the other rail unions.

In the end, SEPTA would treat the rail unions workers as railroad workers rather than transit operators, but their pay scale remains lower than that of other Northeast commuter railroads, such as NJ Transit and the Long Island Rail Road. The strike resulted in lower ridership, which took over 10 years to rebuild.

Center City tunnel

The idea of linking the Philadelphia and Reading lines with an urban tunnel was first adopted by the Philadelphia City Planning Commission in 1960, under the leadership of Edmund Bacon. Such a tunnel would improve the connectivity of the network. The tunnel was constructed between 1976 and 1984 at a cost of $330 million.

As part of the tunnel project SEPTA implemented a diametrical mode of operation. Heretofore the Pennsylvania and Reading trains had terminated in their respective terminals. Besides making transfers difficult, this led to congestion and reduced capacity. With the opening of the tunnel, Pennsylvania trains would run through the tunnel on to matched Reading lines, and vice versa. This would reduce congestion at the downtown stations, as very few trains would terminate or originate at them, and reduce the number of potential passenger transfers as each train reached more destinations. The original plan for the system was made by University of Pennsylvania professor Vukan Vuchic, based on the S-Bahn commuter rail systems in Germany. Numbers were assigned to the Pennsylvania lines in order from south (Airport) to northeast (Trenton); the Reading line matches were chosen to balance ridership, the physical characteristics of the lines, and the location of yards. An additional consideration was avoiding crossovers on the trunk lines. and to attempt to avoid trains running full on one side and then running mostly empty on the other. Vuchic recommended seven lines:

Stage 1, which represented the state of affairs when the tunnel opened in 1984, was hampered by an "imbalance" between the Pennsylvania lines and Reading lines. Both the R3 and R4 would short turn at Wayne Junction or Suburban Station (as would some R7 trains), which cut against the diametrical principle. To correct this, Vuchich proposed the construction of a connection in the Swampoodle neighborhood between the ex-Pennsylvania Chestnut Hill West Line and the ex-Reading trunk line west of Wayne Junction as part of Stage 2, moving the Chestnut Hill West line to the "Reading" side. This connection was never built, leading (among other factors) to the following changes:

 R3 could not go to Chestnut Hill West, so R3 trains from Media/West Chester instead went to West Trenton along the R1. Service to Chestnut Hill West was picked up by the R8.
 R4 was dropped; The R5 Paoli runs local along its entire length most of the time, and Fox Chase became half of the R8.
 R8 was added for Fox Chase to Chestnut Hill West service, using the former R4-Fox Chase and R3-Chestnut Hill West halves.

One of the assumptions in this plan was that ridership would increase after the connection was open. Instead, ridership dropped after the 1983 strike. While recent rises in oil prices have resulted in increased rail ridership for daily commuters, many off-peak trains run with few riders. Pairing up the rail lines based on ridership is less relevant today than it was when the system was implemented.

At a later time, R1 was applied to the former Reading side, shared with the R2 and R5 lines to Glenside station, and R3 to Jenkintown, and R1-Airport trains ran to Glenside station rather than becoming R3 trains to West Trenton. In later years, SEPTA became more flexible in order to cope with differences in ridership on various lines. After the original service patterns were introduced, the following termini changed:

 R2 – Marcus Hook was extended to Wilmington and Newark
 R3 – West Chester was cut back to Elwyn
 R5 – Paoli was extended to Downingtown and Parkesburg, then later cut back to Downingtown, and later re-extended to Thorndale
 R6 – Ivy Ridge was cut back to Cynwyd

On July 25, 2010, the R-numbering system was dropped and each branch was named after its primary outer terminals.

Expansion and cuts in the 1980s

Crises
The 1980s and 1990s were difficult times for SEPTA. While the agency has spent most of its 50-year history staggering from crisis to crisis, the 1980s were a particularly low point. The era was defined by crippling strikes, engineer shortages, drastic service cuts and an abundance of mismanagement. State and local officials, commuters, and general observers were quick to brand SEPTA as the most inept of all the major transit agencies, though getting a handle on what exactly was the cause of its ills was historically difficult.

Railpace Newsmagazine contributor Gerry Williams commented that understanding what routinely transpires in SEPTA upper management rarely made itself clearly known to the general public. Frequently, there were various hidden agendas working in the background, often working at cross purposes with one another. This was often the result of the city (Philadelphia)/Suburban (Bucks, Delaware, Chester, Montgomery) split. The city government had historically been Democratic, the four suburban counties Republican until 2019, when all four suburban counties elected Democratic leadership. This factor is regularly influenced by the changing political winds at the state capital in Harrisburg.

In addition, unlike all other U.S. railroad commuter agencies which are a state agency operated as a leg of its corresponding Department of Transportation, SEPTA is not a state agency and is beholden primarily to the five local governments which comprise it. Williams questioned why there has never been any massive public push to force SEPTA to "clean up its act." He concluded that the crisis within SEPTA "merely reflects the broader problems of local provincialism and petty political squabbles which are so rampant within the region." Williams later commented that "unfortunately, there does not seem to be any group out there influential enough to bring shame on SEPTA, and SEPTA just may be beyond shaming anyway."

Expansion
Service to Reading Terminal ended on November 6, 1984, in anticipation of the opening of the Center City Commuter Connection, which opened on November 12, 1984. The tunnel, first proposed in the 1950s, is an underground connection between PRR and Reading lines; previously, PRR commuter trains terminated at Suburban Station and Reading at Reading Terminal. The connection converted Suburban Station into a through-station and rerouted Reading trains down a steep incline and into a tunnel that turns sharply west near the new Market East Station (now Jefferson Station). The conversion was meant to increase efficiency and reduce the number of tracks needed. On April 28, 1985, the Airport Line opened, providing service from Suburban Station via 30th Street Station to Philadelphia International Airport. This line runs along Amtrak's NEC, then crosses over onto Reading tracks that pass close to the airport. At the airport, a new bridge carries it over Interstate 95 and into the airport terminals between the baggage claim in arrivals and the check-in counters in departures. In 1990, R5 service was extended from Downingtown to Coatesville and Parkesburg. However, on November 10, 1996, R5 service to Parkesburg was truncated to Downingtown. In 2006, SEPTA started negotiations with Wawa Food Markets to purchase land in Wawa, Pennsylvania to build a new Park-and-Ride facility for a planned restoration of service between Elwyn and Wawa on the Media/Wawa Line, which previously ran to West Chester.

Shrinking service

Between 1979 and 1983, diesel locomotives were phased out. With insufficient operating funds and a desire to avoid maintaining deteriorating lines, SEPTA cut various services throughout the 1980s. R3 West Chester service was truncated to Elwyn on September 19, 1986, due to unsatisfactory track beyond. R6 Ivy Ridge service was truncated to Cynwyd on May 17, 1986, due to concerns about the Manayunk Bridge over the Schuylkill River. Service to Cynwyd ended altogether in 1988, but fierce political pressure brought resumed service. R8 diesel service between Fox Chase and Newtown ended on January 14, 1983, after SEPTA decided not to repair failing diesel train equipment. The service was initially terminated on July 1, 1981 (along with diesel services to Allentown and Pottsville) and reinstated on October 5, 1981, using operators from the city transit division. This experimental Fox Chase Rapid Transit Line caused a rift in unions within the organization, adding to the March 1983 strike that lasted 108 days.

SEPTA management was criticized for the cuts. Vukan Vuchic, the transit expert and University of Pennsylvania professor who designed the former R-numbering system for SEPTA, said he had never seen a city the size of Philadelphia "cut transit services quite as drastically as SEPTA. For a system that is already obsolete, any more cutbacks would be disastrous—and likely spell doom for transit in the Philadelphia region. This city would be the first in the world to do that."

DVARP said that SEPTA purposely truncated service and that while other commuter railroad counterparts "in North America expand their rail services, SEPTA is the only one continuing to cut and cut and cut. The only difference between SEPTA and its railroad and transit predecessors is that SEPTA eliminates services to avoid rebuilding assets, while its predecessors (PRR, Reading and Conrail) kept service running while deferring maintenance."

RailWorks

On November 16, 1984, the Columbia Avenue (now Cecil B. Moore Avenue) bridge near old Temple University Station was found to be unsafe, putting all four tracks out of service north of Market East Station. In December 1984, a temporary bridge opened, allowing service to resume north of Market East Station. Nonetheless, the results of decades of deferred maintenance on the Reading Viaduct between the Center City Commuter Connection and Wayne Junction continued to threaten the right-of-way. In 1992, the bridge was in such poor condition that the bridge inspector actually saw the structure sag every time a train passed over the bridge; further inspection revealed that the bridge was in imminent danger of collapsing.

Over the following year, SEPTA undertook a 10-month, $354 million (equivalent to $ million in ) project to overhaul the viaduct, labeled "RailWorks." The viaduct was shut down completely from April 5 to October 3, 1992, and from May 2 to September 4, 1993, with the R6 Norristown, R7 Chestnut Hill East, and R8 Fox Chase lines suspended. Other Reading lines only came as far into the city as the Fern Rock Transportation Center, where riders had to transfer to the Broad Street Line. Express trackage was added to the Broad Street Line to improve travel times from Center City to Fern Rock. Nonetheless, the number of subway trains needed to carry both regular Broad Street Line riders, as well as passengers transferring to the subway because of RailWorks, exceeded the capacity of the above-ground, two-track, stub-end Fern Rock terminus. In 1993, SEPTA added a loop track to Fern Rock Yard, so that northbound trains did not need to use the crossovers at the station throat, somewhat ameliorating the problem. During peak hours, SEPTA ran several diesel trains from the Reading side branches, along non-electrified Conrail trackage, to 30th Street Station.

Meanwhile, SEPTA crews replaced several dilapidated bridges, installed new continuous welded rail and overhead catenary, constructed new rail stations at Temple University and North Broad Street, and upgraded the signals. Upon the completion of RailWorks, the Reading Viaduct became the "newest" piece of railroad owned by SEPTA, although other projects have since allowed improved service on the ex-Reading side of the system.

Ridership
When Conrail handled operations on SEPTA's behalf, overall ridership peaked in 1980 with over 373 million unlinked trips per year. The Regional Rail Division carried over 32 million passengers in 1980, a level which was not to be exceeded again for decades. Regional Rail ridership subsequently declined in 1982 after SEPTA ceased operating diesel service. It then sharply declined by half after SEPTA assumed operations in 1983, hitting a new low of just under 13 million passengers. This decline of ridership was the result of a drawn-out strike by the railroad unions, the discontinuing of service to over 60 stations, the increase in fares during a period of decreasing gasoline prices, and the unfamiliarity of SEPTA's management in operating a commuter railroad.

In 1992, ridership dipped again due to economic factors and due to SEPTA's RailWorks project, which shut down half of the railroad over two periods of several months each in 1992 and 1993. A mild recession in 1992–1994 also dampened ridership, but a booming economy in the late 1990s helped increase ridership to near the peak level of 1980.

In 2000, ridership started a slight decline due to the slow economy, but in 2003 ridership started increasing again. The average weekday passenger counts have not increased at the same rate as the total annual passenger counts, which may mean that weekend ridership is increasing. In 2008, Regional Rail ridership hit an all-time high of over 35 million. In 2009, it was down 1% of this high, but by fiscal year 2013 ridership reached a new high of over 36 million.  This number was passed again in 2015 with a new record of 37.7 million trips.

The following chart shows SEPTA Regional Rail ridership from 1979 to 2021:

2014 strike
On June 14, 2014, a strike shut down SEPTA's Regional Rail service after negotiations failed between SEPTA and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. A total of 400 workers walked off the job. As a result of the strike, SEPTA planned to add additional capacity on bus, subway, and trolley routes along with the Norristown High Speed Line during off-peak hours. On the first day of the strike, Governor Tom Corbett asked President Barack Obama to appoint a presidential emergency board to attempt to end the labor dispute and force employees back to work. A short time after 7 p.m. on June 14, President Obama signed an executive order forcing workers to return and continue negotiations through the presidential emergency board. SEPTA Regional Rail service resumed on June 15.

COVID-19 measures (2020-2021)
SEPTA Regional Rail operated "Lifeline Service" during the COVID-19 pandemic. On April 9, 2020, service was suspended on the Chestnut Hill East, Chestnut Hill West, Cynwyd, Manayunk/Norristown, West Trenton, and Wilmington/Newark lines. Service along the Lansdale/Doylestown and Paoli/Thorndale lines were also truncated to  and , respectively. Wilmington/Newark Line service as far as  resumed on May 10, 2020, as part of the Southwest Connection Improvement Program, while service was suspended along the Media/Wawa Line on the same date. The West Trenton Line and Paoli/Thorndale Line service to  resumed on June 15, 2020. Lansdale/Doylestown Line service to  resumed on June 22, 2020. The Chestnut Hill East, Manayunk/Norristown, and Media/Elwyn lines resumed on June 28, 2020. On the same date, service levels increased on all lines except the Chestnut Hill West and Cynwyd lines. Service on the Wilmington/Newark Line to Newark resumed on January 25, 2021 in order to offer public transit options during a construction project along Interstate 95 in Wilmington. Service on the Chestnut Hill West Line resumed on March 8, 2021, on a limited schedule, with service running Monday through Friday. Service on the Cynwyd Line resumed with limited operations on September 7, 2021. Weekend service on the Chestnut Hill West Line was restored on December 19, 2021.

2045 Philadelphia transit plan

In February 2021, the city government of Philadelphia announced the Philadelphia Transit Plan, which outlines the city's proposals for its public transportation system through 2045. For Regional Rail, the plan included increased service frequency, a fare system overhaul, and the creation of many metro-like Regional Rail lines within the Philadelphia city limits and close suburbs. Regional Rail would be split into the Silver Line, frequent Regional Rail (metro-style lines), and Regional Express Service (lines similar to the current Regional Rail, which would make fewer stops closer to Philadelphia). This plan would require upgraded tracks and stations, new vehicles, and infrastructure replacement and upgrades. Similar to other major infrastructure upgrades to existing commuter networks such as GO Transit Regional Express Rail in Toronto or the Electrification of Caltrain in San Francisco. The plan also proposed extensions of Regional Rail services to Phoenixville, Quakertown, and West Chester.

The 2045 Transit Plan breaks this into 3 phases.

Phase 1: "The Silver Line"
Phase 1 entails the creation of the "Silver Line". The name comes from the Silverliner family of EMUs which are used in Regional Rail service, and was chosen to denote the metro-like similarities between the Silver Line and the Blue (Market–Frankford) and Orange (Broad Street) lines. The Silver Line would run from Fern Rock Transportation Center in North Philadelphia to Penn Medicine station in University City. It would have the same frequency as a bus line, with 15-minute headway for 15 hours a day every week. Fares along the Silver Line would be similar to SEPTA's other transportation modes, including bus, trolley, and subway.

Phase 2: Upgrade priority lines
Phase 2 would include the addition of more metro-like regional rail routes. These would be called Frequent Regional Rail lines and would be similar to the Silver Line, having lower fares, free transfers, and increased frequencies. Currently, there are four phase 2 routes proposed, including conversion of the Manayunk/Norristown, Chestnut Hill East, and Airport lines to Frequent Regional Rail, and a portion of the SEPTA Main Line from Fern Rock Transportation Center to Jenkintown–Wyncote station in Jenkintown would have Frequent Regional Rail alongside Regional Express Services.

Phase 3: Full implementation
Phase 3 would include the implementation of the final Frequent Regional Rail lines, additional infrastructure, vehicle, and station upgrades. As part of phase 3, the Chestnut Hill West, Fox Chase, and Warminster lines would be completely replaced with Frequent Regional Rail, while the Lansdale/Doylestown, Media/Wawa, Paoli/Thorndale, and West Trenton lines would have Frequent Regional Rail run alongside Regional Express Services to Lansdale, Elwyn, Villanova, and Somerton respectively.

The city of Philadelphia and SEPTA expect this plan to take decades and billions of dollars to complete.

See also
Commuter rail in North America
List of Pennsylvania railroads
List of suburban and commuter rail systems
List of North American commuter rail operators
List of United States commuter rail systems by ridership

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

 NYCsubway.org – SEPTA Regional Rail Lines
 Pennsylvania Transit Expansion Coalition (PA-TEC)
 Delaware Valley Association of Rail Passengers (DVARP)
 SEPTA Stats - Real-time Stats on Regional Rail

Railway companies established in 1983
Standard gauge railways in the United States
American companies established in 1983

SEPTA Regional Rail


Antonio Bernocchi was an Italian industrialist, who built up a successful textile factory at Legnano, a city in the Lombardy region of northern Italy.

Life

Bernocchi was born on 17 January 1859 at Castellanza in the province of Varese, in Lombardy in northern Italy. He was one of three sons of Rodolfo Bernocchi and Angela Colombo.

Bernocchi attended the Scuola Tecnica of Busto Arsizio, but did not complete his education. By the age of fifteen he was working for his father in a small workshop for bleaching textiles at Legnano. In 1898 the family started a textile factory at Legnano. The business became very successful, which was successful and grew substantially. Factories were opened at Nerviano, Cerro Maggiore and Angera. Bernocchi became mayor of Legnano and a member of the Italian Senate.

Bernocchi made several charitable donations. After the Italian defeat at Caporetto in World War I, he donated to a new charity for war veterans, La Patria Riconoscente. The charity was later called the Opera Nazionale Combattenti. He gave funds for the establishment or expansion of schools and hospitals in Legnano, where two schools are named after him. He was a benefactor of La Scala in Milan. His biggest donation was five million lire to the city of Milan for the construction of the Palazzo dell'Arte, home of the Triennale exhibition, in the Parco Sempione. The pavilion, also known as Palazzo Bernocchi, was designed by Giovanni Muzio and built between 1931 and 1933. Bernocchi's brothers, Andrea and Michele, also contributed to the construction of the pavillion.

The Coppa Bernocchi, a bicycle race held at Legnano since 1919, is dedicated to Bernocchi.

References

1859 births
1930 deaths
Italian businesspeople
Italian philanthropists

Antonio Bernocchi


Engineer reconnaissance is the reconnaissance operations performed by combat engineers to enable forward movement of own troops, in war usually over territory previously occupied by the enemy. The activity includes provision of reconnaissance instructions on the intended route for which a commander needs an engineer reconnaissance report, identification of road and bridge symbols, posting of safe transit notices for identified bridge capacities, estimation for time and materials required to effect route repair, and performance of demolition reconnaissance to identify intended enemy demolitions.

Consequence of little or no route reconnaissance and engineer reconnaissance leads to hurdles in operational mobility and tactical frontal assault, leading to defeat or wipe out as it happened to Pakistan in the Battle of Longewala against India.

See also
 Route reconnaissance
 Military tactics
 Obstacles to troop movement
 Types of military tactics
 Types of military operations
 Types of military strategies

References

External links
 military operations

reconnaissance
Maneuver tactics
Reconnaissance

Engineer reconnaissance


Caulfield is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 7 miles south-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Glen Eira. In 2006 there were 4790 people living in Caulfied.

The boundaries of Caulfield are Kooyong Road in the west, Glen Eira Road in the north, Glenhuntly Road in the south and Booran Road in the east.

Caulfield is best known as the location of Caulfield Racecourse and the Caulfield campus of Monash University.

History
It is not known why the area was called Caulfield, but it is probably linked with Baron Caulfeild of Ireland. John Caulfield was an early settler in the colony of Victoria. The name Caulfield was in use by 1853, and the early maps always place it somewhere around the racecourse.

The whole area was named the Caulfield Road District in 1857. Caulfield Post Office opened on 1 January 1863 and closed in 1974. Caulfield Junction Post Office opened in 1923 and is still open.

Parks and Open Space
Caulfield Park is a large Victorian era garden between by Hawthorn, Balaclava and Inkerman Roads. It has a war memorial, a decorative lake and playing fields for various sports.

Public transport
Caulfield is one of Melbourne's suburbs most serviced by public transport.

Trains connect the suburb to the city via the major transport interchange, Caulfield railway station at Caulfield East.

Trams service North, South and East Caulfield with route 67 (along Glenhuntly Road) route 64 (along Hawthorn Road), crossing Hawthorn Road at both Balaclava Road and Glenhuntly Road and route 3 near the railway station.

Helen Shardey  is the Liberal State Member for Caulfield.

Sport
Caulfield has an football team playing in the Southern Football League.

References

Other websites
 Glen Eira City Council
Australian Places: Caulfield

Suburbs of Melbourne

Caulfield, Victoria


Carlos Castillo Armas (; 4 November 191426 July 1957) was a Guatemalan military officer and politician who was the 28th president of Guatemala, serving from 1954 to 1957 after taking power in a coup d'état. A member of the right-wing National Liberation Movement (MLN) party, his authoritarian government was closely allied with the United States.

Born to a planter, out of wedlock, Castillo Armas was educated at Guatemala's military academy. A protégé of Colonel Francisco Javier Arana, he joined Arana's forces during the 1944 uprising against President Federico Ponce Vaides. This began the Guatemalan Revolution and the introduction of representative democracy to the country. Castillo Armas joined the General Staff and became director of the military academy. Arana and Castillo Armas opposed the newly elected government of Juan José Arévalo; after Arana's failed 1949 coup, Castillo Armas went into exile in Honduras. Seeking support for another revolt, he came to the attention of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In 1950 he launched a failed assault on Guatemala City, before escaping back to Honduras. Influenced by lobbying by the United Fruit Company and Cold War fears of communism, in 1952 the US government of President Harry Truman authorized Operation PBFortune, a plot to overthrow Arévalo's successor, President Jacobo Árbenz. Castillo Armas was to lead the coup, but the plan was abandoned before being revived in a new form by US President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1953.

In June 1954, Castillo Armas led 480 CIA-trained soldiers into Guatemala, backed by US-supplied aircraft. Despite initial setbacks to the rebel forces, US support for the rebels made the Guatemalan army reluctant to fight, and Árbenz resigned on 27 June. A series of military juntas briefly held power during negotiations that ended with Castillo Armas assuming the presidency on 7 July. Castillo Armas consolidated his power in an October 1954 election, in which he was the only candidate; the MLN, which he led, was the only party allowed to contest the congressional elections. Árbenz's popular agricultural reform was largely rolled back, with land confiscated from small farmers and returned to large landowners. Castillo Armas cracked down on unions and peasant organizations, arresting and killing thousands. He created a National Committee of Defense Against Communism, which investigated over 70,000 people and added 10 percent of the population to a list of suspected communists.

Despite these efforts, Castillo Armas faced significant internal resistance, which was blamed on communist agitation. The government, plagued by corruption and soaring debt, became dependent on aid from the US. In 1957 Castillo Armas was assassinated by a presidential guard with leftist sympathies. He was the first of a series of authoritarian rulers in Guatemala who were close allies of the US. His reversal of the reforms of his predecessors sparked a series of leftist insurgencies in the country after his death, culminating in the Guatemalan Civil War of 1960 to 1996.

Early life and career

Carlos Castillo Armas was born on 4 November 1914, in Santa Lucía Cotzumalguapa in the department of Escuintla. He was the son of a landowner, but was born out of wedlock, making him ineligible to inherit the property. In 1936 he graduated from the Guatemalan military academy. His time at the academy overlapped with that of Jacobo Árbenz, who would later become President of Guatemala.

In June 1944, a series of popular protests forced the resignation of dictator Jorge Ubico. Ubico's successor Federico Ponce Vaides pledged to hold free elections, but continued to suppress dissent, leading progressives in the army to plot a coup against him. The plot was initially led by Árbenz and Aldana Sandoval; Sandoval persuaded Francisco Javier Arana, the influential commander of the Guardia de Honor, to join the coup in its final stages. On 19 October, Arana and Árbenz launched a coup against Ponce Vaides' government. In the election that followed, Juan José Arévalo was elected president. Castillo Armas was a strong supporter and protégé of Arana, and thus joined the rebels. Speaking of Castillo Armas, Árbenz would later say that he was "modest, brave, sincere" and that he had fought with "great bravery" during the coup.

For seven months, between October 1945 and April 1946, Castillo Armas received training at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he came in contact with American intelligence officers. After serving on the General Staff, he became director of the military academy until early 1949, at which point he was made the military commander at Mazatenango, Suchitepéquez, a remote military garrison. Castillo Armas had eventually risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was at Mazatenango when Arana launched his failed coup attempt against Arévalo on 18 July 1949, and was killed: Castillo Armas did not hear of the revolt until four days later. Historians differ on what happened to him at this point. Historian Piero Gleijeses writes that Castillo Armas was expelled from the country following the coup attempt against Arévalo. Nick Cullather and Andrew Fraser state that Castillo Armas was arrested in August 1949, that Árbenz had him imprisoned under doubtful charges until December 1949, and that he was found in Honduras a month later.

Operation PBFortune and CIA ties

Following the end of Arévalo's highly popular presidency in 1951, Árbenz was elected president. He continued the reforms of Arévalo and also began an ambitious land reform program known as Decree 900. Under it, the uncultivated portions of large land-holdings were expropriated in return for compensation and redistributed to poverty-stricken agricultural laborers. The agrarian reform law angered the United Fruit Company, which at the time dominated the Guatemalan economy. Benefiting from decades of support from the US government, by 1930 the company was already the largest landowner and employer in Guatemala. It was granted further favors by Ubico, including  of public land, and an exemption from all taxes.

Feeling threatened by Árbenz's reforms, the company responded with an intensive lobbying campaign directed at members of the United States government. The Cold War had also predisposed the administration of US President Harry Truman to see the Guatemalan government as communist. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) started to explore the notion of lending support to detractors and opponents of Árbenz. Walter Bedell Smith, the Director of Central Intelligence, ordered J. C. King, the chief of the Western Hemisphere Division, to examine whether dissident Guatemalans could topple the Árbenz government if they had support from the authoritarian governments in Central America.

Castillo Armas had encountered the CIA in January 1950, when a CIA officer learned he was attempting to get weapons from Anastasio Somoza García and Rafael Trujillo, the right-wing authoritarian rulers of Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, respectively. The CIA officer had described him as "a quiet, soft-spoken officer who [did] not seem to be given to exaggeration". Castillo Armas met with the CIA a few more times before November 1950. Speaking to the CIA, he had stated that he had the support of the Guardia Civil (the Civil Guard), the army garrison at Quezaltenango, as well as the commander of Matamoros, the largest fortress in Guatemala City.

A few days after his last meeting with the CIA, Castillo Armas had led an assault against Matamoros along with a handful of supporters. The attack failed, and Castillo Armas was wounded and arrested. A year later, he bribed his way out of prison, and escaped back to Honduras. Castillo Armas's stories of his revolt and escape from prison proved popular among the right-wing exiles in Honduras. Among these people, Castillo Armas claimed to still have support among the army, and began planning another revolt. His reputation was inflated by stories that he had escaped from prison through a tunnel.

The engineer dispatched by the CIA to liaise with Castillo Armas informed the CIA that Castillo Armas had the financial backing of Somoza and Trujillo. Truman thereupon authorized Operation PBFortune. When contacted by the CIA agent dispatched by Smith, Castillo Armas proposed a battle-plan to gain CIA support. This plan involved three forces invading Guatemala from Mexico, Honduras, and ElSalvador. These invasions were supposed to be supported by internal rebellions. King formulated a plan to provide Castillo Armas with $225,000 as well as weaponry and transportation. Somoza was involved in the scheme; the CIA also contacted Trujillo, and Marcos Pérez Jiménez, the US-supported right-wing dictator of Venezuela, who were both supportive, and agreed to contribute some funding. However, the coup attempt was terminated by Dean Acheson, the US Secretary of State, before it could be completed. Accounts of the final termination of the coup attempt vary: some argue that it was due to the US State Department discovering the coup, while others say that it was due to Somoza spreading information about the CIA's role in it, leading to the coup's cover being blown.

Castillo Armas's services were retained by the CIA, who paid him $3,000 a week, which allowed him to maintain a small force. The CIA remained in contact with him, and continued to provide support to the rebels. The money paid to Castillo Armas has been described as a way of making sure that he did not attempt any premature action. Even after the operation had been terminated, the CIA received reports from a Spanish-speaking agent operating under the code name "Seekford" that the Guatemalan rebels were planning assassinations. Castillo Armas made plans to use groups of soldiers in civilian clothing from Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador to kill political and military leaders in Guatemala.

Coup d'état

Planning

In November 1952 Dwight Eisenhower was elected president of the US, promising to take a harder line against communism. Senior figures in his administration, including Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother and CIA director Allen Dulles, had close ties to the United Fruit Company, making Eisenhower more strongly predisposed than Truman to support Árbenz's overthrow. These factors culminated in the Eisenhower administration's decision to authorize "Operation PBSuccess" to overthrow the Guatemalan government in August 1953.

The operation had a budget of between five and seven million dollars. It involved a number of CIA agents, and widespread local recruiting. The plans included drawing up lists of people within Árbenz's government to be assassinated if the coup were to be carried out. A team of diplomats who would support PBSuccess was created; the leader of this team was John Peurifoy, who took over as the US ambassador in Guatemala in October 1953.

The CIA considered several candidates to lead the coup. Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, the conservative candidate who had lost the 1950 election to Árbenz, held favor with the opposition but was rejected for his role in the Ubico regime, as well as his European appearance, which was unlikely to appeal to the majority mixed-race "Ladinos", or mestizo population. Castillo Armas, in contrast, is described by historian Nick Cullather as a "physically unimposing man with marked mestizo features". Another front-runner was coffee planter Juan Córdova Cerna, who had briefly served in Arévalo's cabinet. The death of his son in an anti-government uprising in 1950 had turned him against the administration. Although his status as a civilian gave him an advantage over Castillo Armas, he was diagnosed with throat cancer in 1954, taking him out of the reckoning.

This led to the selection of Castillo Armas, the former lieutenant of Arana, who had been in exile following the failed coup in 1949. Castillo Armas had remained on the CIA payroll since the aborted Operation PBFortune in 1951. Historians have also stated that Castillo Armas was ultimately seen as the most dependable leader from the CIA's perspective. He also had the advantage of having had a clerical education during his exile, and therefore the support of Guatemala's archbishop.  In CIA documents, he was referred to by the codename "Calligeris."

Castillo Armas was given enough money to recruit a small force of approximately 150 mercenaries from among Guatemalan exiles and the populations of nearby countries. This band was called the "Army of Liberation". The CIA established training camps in Nicaragua and Honduras, and supplied them with weapons as well as several planes flown by American pilots. Prior to the invasion of Guatemala, the US signed military agreements with both of those countries, allowing it to move heavier arms freely. These preparations were only superficially covert: the CIA intended Árbenz to find out about them, as a part of its plan to convince the Guatemalan people that the overthrow of Árbenz was inevitable.

Castillo Armas's army was not large enough to defeat the Guatemalan military, even with US-supplied planes. Therefore, the plans for Operation PBSuccess called for a campaign of psychological warfare, which would present Castillo Armas's victory as a fait accompli to the Guatemalan people, and would force Árbenz to resign. The US propaganda campaign began well before the invasion, with the United States Information Agency writing hundreds of articles on Guatemala based on CIA reports, and distributing tens of thousands of leaflets throughout Latin America. The CIA persuaded the governments that were friendly to it to screen video footage of Guatemala that supported the US version of events. The most wide-reaching psychological weapon was the radio station known as the "Voice of Liberation". This station began broadcasting on 1 May 1954, carrying anti-communist messages and telling its listeners to resist the Árbenz government and support the liberating forces of Castillo Armas. The station claimed to be broadcasting from deep within the jungles of the Guatemalan hinterland, a message that many listeners believed. In actuality, the broadcasts were concocted in Miami by Guatemalan exiles, flown to Central America, and broadcast through a mobile transmitter.

Invasion

Castillo Armas's force of 480 men was split into four teams, ranging in size from 60 to 198. On 15 June 1954, these four forces left their bases in Honduras and El Salvador and assembled in various towns just outside the Guatemalan border. The largest force was supposed to attack the Atlantic harbor town of Puerto Barrios, while the others were to attack the smaller towns of Esquipulas, Jutiapa, and Zacapa, the Guatemalan Army's largest frontier post. The invasion plan quickly faced difficulties; the 60-man force was intercepted and jailed by Salvadoran policemen before it got to the border. At 8:20am on 18 June 1954, Castillo Armas led his invading troops over the border. Ten trained saboteurs preceded the invasion, with the aim of blowing up railways and cutting telegraph lines. At about the same time, Castillo Armas's planes flew over a pro-government rally in the capital. Castillo Armas demanded Árbenz's immediate surrender. The invasion provoked a brief panic in the capital, which quickly decreased as the rebels failed to make any significant headway. Travelling on foot and weighed down by weapons and supplies, Castillo Armas's forces took several days to reach their targets, although their planes blew up a bridge on 19 June.

When the rebels did reach their targets, they experienced further setbacks. The force of 122 men targeting Zacapa was intercepted and decisively beaten by a small garrison of 30 loyalist soldiers, with only 30 rebels escaping death or capture. The force that attacked Puerto Barrios was defeated by policemen and armed dockworkers, with many of the rebels fleeing back to Honduras. In an effort to regain momentum, the rebels attacked the capital with their planes. These attacks caused little material damage, but they had a significant psychological impact, leading many citizens to believe that the invasion force was more powerful than it actually was. The CIA also continued to transmit propaganda from the supposed "Voice of Liberation" station throughout the conflict, broadcasting news of rebel troops converging on the capital, and contributing to massive demoralization among both the army and the civilian population.

Aftermath

Árbenz was initially confident that his army would quickly dispatch the rebel force. The victory of the small Zacapa garrison strengthened his belief. However, the CIA's psychological warfare made the army unwilling to fight Castillo Armas. Gleijeses stated that if it were not for US support for the rebellion, the officer corps of the Guatemalan army would have remained loyal to Árbenz because although not uniformly his supporters, they were more wary of Castillo Armas; they had strong nationalist views, and were opposed to foreign interference. As it was, they believed that the US would intervene militarily, leading to a battle they could not win. On 17 June, the army leaders at Zacapa had begun to negotiate with Castillo Armas. They signed a pact, known as the Pacto de Las Tunas, three days later, which placed the army at Zacapa under Castillo Armas in return for a general amnesty. The army returned to its barracks a few days later, "despondent, with a terrible sense of defeat", according to Gleijeses.

Árbenz decided to arm the civilian population to defend the capital; this plan failed, as an insufficient number of people volunteered. At this point, Colonel Carlos Enrique Díaz de León, the chief of staff of the Guatemalan army, reneged on his support for the president and began plotting to overthrow Árbenz with the assistance of other senior army officers. They informed Peurifoy of this plan, asking him to stop the hostilities in return for Árbenz's resignation. On 27 June 1954, Árbenz met with Díaz, and informed him that he was resigning. Historian Hugo Jiménez wrote that Castillo Armas's invasion did not pose a significant direct threat to Árbenz; rather, the coup led by Diaz and the Guatemalan army was the critical factor in his overthrow.

Árbenz left office at 8pm, after recording a resignation speech that was broadcast on the radio an hour later. Immediately afterward, Díaz announced that he would be taking over the presidency in the name of the Guatemalan Revolution, and stated that the Guatemalan army would still fight against Castillo Armas's invasion. Peurifoy had not expected Díaz to keep fighting. A couple of days later, Peurifoy informed Díaz that he would have to resign; according to the CIA officer who spoke to Díaz, this was because he was "not convenient for American foreign policy". At first, Díaz attempted to placate Peurifoy by forming a junta with Colonel Elfego Monzón and Colonel José Angel Sánchez, and led by himself. Peurifoy continued to insist that he resign, until Díaz was overthrown by a rapid bloodless coup led by Monzón, who, according to Gleijeses, was more pliable. The other members of Monzón's junta were José Luis Cruz Salazar and Mauricio Dubois.

Initially, Monzón was not willing to hand over power to Castillo Armas. The US State Department persuaded Óscar Osorio, the president of ElSalvador, to invite Monzón, Castillo Armas, and other significant individuals to participate in peace talks in San Salvador. Osorio agreed to do so, and after Díaz had been deposed, Monzón and Castillo Armas arrived in the Salvadoran capital on 30 June. Castillo Armas wished to incorporate some of his rebel forces into the Guatemalan military; Monzón, was reluctant to allow this, leading to difficulties in the negotiations. Castillo Armas also saw Monzón as having been late to enter the fight against Árbenz. The negotiations nearly broke down on this issue on the very first day, and so Peurifoy, who had remained in Guatemala City to give the impression that the US was not heavily involved, traveled to San Salvador. Allen Dulles later said that Peurifoy's role was to "crack some heads together".

Peurifoy was able to force an agreement due to the fact that neither Monzón nor Castillo Armas was in a position to become or remain president without the support of the US. The deal was announced at 4:45am on 2 July 1954, and under its terms, Castillo Armas and his subordinate, Major Enrique Trinidad Oliva, became members of the junta led by Monzón, although Monzón remained president. The settlement negotiated by Castillo Armas and Monzón also included a statement that the five-man junta would rule for fifteen days, during which a president would be chosen. Colonels Dubois and Cruz Salazar, Monzón's supporters on the junta, had signed a secret agreement without Monzón's knowledge. On 7 July they resigned in keeping with the terms of the agreement. Monzón, left outnumbered on the junta, also resigned, and on 8 July, Castillo Armas was unanimously elected president of the junta. Dubois and Salazar were each paid US$100,000 for cooperating with Castillo Armas. The US promptly recognized the new government on 13 July.

Presidency and assassination

Election

Soon after taking power, Castillo Armas faced a coup from young army cadets, who were unhappy with the army's capitulation. The coup was put down, leaving 29 dead and 91 wounded. Elections were held in early October from which all political parties were barred from participating. Castillo Armas was the only candidate; he won the election with 99 percent of the vote, completing his transition into power. Castillo Armas became affiliated with a party named the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional (MLN), which remained the ruling party of Guatemala from 1954 to 1957. It was led by Mario Sandoval Alarcón, and was a coalition of municipal politicians, bureaucrats, coffee planters, and members of the military, all of whom were opposed to the reforms of the Guatemalan Revolution. In the congressional elections held under Castillo Armas in late 1955, it was the only party allowed to run.

Authoritarian rule

Prior to the 1954 coup, Castillo Armas had been reluctant to discuss how he would govern the country. He had never articulated any particular philosophy, which had worried his CIA contacts. The closest he came to doing so was the "Plan de Tegucigalpa", a manifesto issued on 23 December 1953, that criticized the "Sovietization of Guatemala". Castillo Armas had expressed sympathy for justicialismo, the philosophy supported by Juan Perón, the President of Argentina.

Upon taking power Castillo Armas, worried that he lacked popular support, attempted to eliminate all opposition. He quickly arrested many thousands of opposition leaders, branding them communists. Detention camps were built to hold the prisoners when the jails exceeded their capacity. Historians have estimated that more than 3,000 people were arrested following the coup, and that approximately 1,000 agricultural workers were killed by Castillo Armas's troops on Finca Jocatán alone, near Tiquisate, which had been a major center of labour organising throughout the decade of the revolution. Acting on the advice of Dulles, Castillo Armas also detained a number of citizens trying to flee the country. He also created a National Committee of Defense Against Communism (CDNCC), with sweeping powers of arrest, detention, and deportation. Over the next few years, the committee investigated nearly 70,000 people. Many were imprisoned, executed, or "disappeared", frequently without trial.

In August 1954, the government passed Decree59, which permitted the security forces to detain anybody on the blacklist of the CDNCC for six months without trial. The eventual list of suspected communists compiled by the CDNCC included one in every ten adults in the country. Attempts were also made to eliminate from government positions people who had gained them under Árbenz. All political parties, labor unions, and peasant organizations were outlawed. In histories of the period, Castillo Armas has been referred to as a dictator.

Castillo Armas's junta drew support from individuals in Guatemala that had previously supported Ubico. José Bernabé Linares, the deeply unpopular head of Ubico's secret police, was named the new head of the security forces. Linares had a reputation for using electric-shock baths and steel skull-caps to torture prisoners. Castillo Armas also removed the right to vote from all illiterate people, who constituted two-thirds of the country's population, and annulled the 1945 constitution, giving himself virtually unbridled power. His government launched a concerted campaign against trade unionists, in which some of the most severe violence was directed at workers on the plantations of the United Fruit Company. In 1956 Castillo Armas implemented a new constitution and had himself declared president for four years. His presidency faced opposition from the beginning: agricultural laborers continued to fight Castillo Armas's forces until August 1954, and there were numerous uprisings against him, especially in the areas that had experienced significant agricultural reform.

Opposition to his government grew during Castillo Armas's presidency. On Labor Day in 1956, members of the government were booed off a stage at a labor rally, while officials who had previously been in the Árbenz administration were cheered. The Guatemalan Communist Party began to recover underground, and became prominent in the opposition. Overall, the government had to deal with four serious rebellions, in addition to the coup attempt by the cadets in 1954. On 25 June 1956, government forces opened fire on student protesters, killing six people and wounding a large number. Castillo Armas responded by declaring a "state of siege", and revoked all civil liberties. On the advice of the US ambassador, the protests were portrayed as a communist plot.

Decree 900 reversal

Castillo Armas's government also attempted to reverse the agrarian reform project initiated by Árbenz, and large areas of land were seized from the agrarian laborers who had received them under Árbenz and given to large landowners. In only a few isolated instances were peasants able to retain their lands. Castillo Armas's reversal of Árbenz's agrarian reforms led the US embassy to comment that it was a "long step backwards" from the previous policy. Thousands of peasants who attempted to remain on the lands they had received from Árbenz were arrested by the Guatemalan police. Some peasants were arrested under the pretext that they were communists, though very few of them were. Few of these arrested peasants were ever convicted, but landlords used the arrests to evict peasants from their land. The government under Castillo Armas issued two ordinances related to agricultural policy. In theory, these decrees promised to protect the grants of land made by the Árbenz government under Decree900. The decrees also allowed landowners to petition for the return of land seized "illegally". However, the repressive atmosphere at the time in which the decrees were passed meant that very few peasants could take advantage of them. In total, of the 529,939 manzanas of land expropriated under Decree900, 368,481 were taken from peasants and returned to landowners. Ultimately, Castillo Armas did not go as far towards restoring the power and privileges of his upper-class and business constituency as they would have liked. A "liberation tax" that he imposed was not popular among the wealthy.

Economic issues

Castillo Armas's dependence on the officer corps and the mercenaries who had put him in power led to widespread corruption, and the USgovernment was soon subsidizing the Guatemalan government with many millions of dollars. Guatemala quickly came to depend completely on financial support from the Eisenhower administration. Castillo Armas proved unable to attract sufficient business investment, and in September 1954 asked the US for $260million  in aid. Castillo Armas also directed his government to provide support to the CIA operation "PBHistory", an unsuccessful effort to use documents captured after the 1954 coup to sway international opinion in its favor. Despite examining many hundreds of thousands of documents, this operation failed to find any evidence that the Soviet Union was controlling communists within Guatemala. Castillo also found himself too dependent on a coalition of economic interests, including the cotton and sugar industries in Guatemala and real estate, timber, and oil interests in the US, to be able to seriously pursue reforms that he had promised, such as free trade with the US.

By April 1955 the  government's foreign exchange reserves had declined from US$42million at the end of 1954 to just $3.4million. The regime was thus facing difficulties borrowing money, leading to capital flight. The government also received criticism for the presence of black markets and other signs of approaching bankruptcy. By the end of 1954 the number of unemployed people in the country had risen to 20,000, four times higher than it had been during the latter years of the Árbenz government. In April 1955 the Eisenhower administration approved an aid package of $53million and began to underwrite the debt of the Guatemalan government. Although officials in the USgovernment complained about Castillo Armas's incompetence and corruption, he also received praise in that country for acting against communists, and his human rights violations generally went unremarked. In 1955, during a corn famine, Castillo Armas gave corn import licenses to some of his old fighters in return for a $25,000 bribe. The imported corn, upon inspection by the United Nations, turned out to be unfit for consumption. When a student newspaper exposed the story, Castillo Armas launched a police crackdown against those criticizing him. Castillo Armas returned some of the privileges that the United Fruit Company had had under Ubico, but the company did not benefit substantially from them; it went into a gradual decline following disastrous experiments with breeding and pesticides, falling demand, and an anti-trust action.

Death and legacy
On 26 July 1957, Castillo Armas was shot dead by a leftist in the presidential palace in Guatemala City. The assassin, Romeo Vásquez Sánchez, was a member of the presidential guard; he approached Castillo Armas as he was walking with his wife and shot him twice. Castillo Armas died instantly; Vásquez was reported to have fled to a different room and committed suicide. There is no conclusive information about whether Vásquez was acting alone or whether he was a part of a larger conspiracy. Elections were held following Castillo Armas's death in which the government-aligned Miguel Ortiz Passarelli won a majority. However, supporters of Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes, who had also been a candidate in the election, rioted, after which the army seized power and annulled the result, and another election was held. Ydígoras Fuentes won this election by a comfortable margin, and soon afterward declared a "state of siege" and seized complete control over the government.

Historian Nick Cullather wrote that by overthrowing Árbenz, the CIA ended up undermining its own initial goal of a stable Guatemalan government. Historian Stephen Streeter stated that while the US achieved certain strategic goals by installing the "malleable" Castillo Armas as president, it did so at the cost of Guatemala's democratic institutions. He further states that, although Castillo Armas probably would have committed the human rights violations that he did even without a US presence, the US State Department had certainly aided and abetted the process. The rolling back of the progressive policies of the previous civilian governments resulted in a series of leftist insurgencies in the countryside beginning in 1960. This triggered the Guatemalan Civil War between the US-backed military government of Guatemala and leftist insurgents, who often boasted a sizable following among the citizenry. The conflict, which lasted between 1960 and 1996, resulted in the deaths of 200,000 civilians. Though crimes against civilians were committed by both sides, 93 percent of such atrocities were committed by the US-backed military. These violations included a genocidal scorched-earth campaign against the indigenous Maya population during the 1980s. Historians have attributed the violence of the civil war to the 1954 coup, and the "anti-communist paranoia" that it generated.

Notes and references

Explanatory footnotes

Citations

General and cited references

Further reading

External links

1914 births
1957 deaths
20th-century Guatemalan people
Assassinated Guatemalan politicians
Assassinated heads of government
Deaths by firearm in Guatemala
Guatemalan anti-communists
Guatemalan military personnel
Guatemalan Revolution
Leaders who took power by coup
People from Escuintla Department
People murdered in Guatemala
Presidents of Guatemala
Guatemalan colonels
1950s assassinated politicians
Assassinated presidents in North America
20th-century assassinated national presidents

Carlos Castillo Armas