Donald J. Russell

Donald Joseph McKay Russell (January 3, 1900 – December 13, 1985) was an American railroad executive. He was president of Southern Pacific Railroad from 1952 to 1964 and then chairman from 1964 to 1972. Russell was featured on the cover of Time on August 11, 1961, and Forbes on November 1, 1965.

Early life and education Russell was born in Denver, Colorado, in 1900. during the war, he was badly injured in a plane crash, and subsequently returned to California.

Career

In 1920, Russell began his career at Southern Pacific as a 45-cent-an-hour timekeeper. From 1923 to 1926, he was in charge of double tracking the railroad line over the Sierra Nevada mountains; in 1926 and 1927, he was in charge of rehabilitation of the railroad line between Grass Lake, California and Kirk, Oregon, and construction of a new railroad terminal at Klamath Falls and Crescent Lake, Oregon.

In 1937 he became assistant to the general manager at Southern Pacific's headquarters in San Francisco; in 1939, he became superintendent of the Los Angeles Division. In this period, he held many executive positions; in 1941, he became assistant to the president of Southern Pacific and subsequently vice president; in 1943, he was promoted to director; in 1951 to executive vice president; and in 1952, he became the organization's president, the youngest since the line's founder, Leland Stanford. Russell said as early as June 1957, "We're going down that road of discontinuing long-haul passenger service with a gradual transition toward the elimination of all passenger service." On the other hand, Robert Jochner, Passenger Department director for Southern Pacific denied this, saying the only reason that Russell downgraded service was not so much to get rid of the passenger trains, but to make sure they made money. Russell retired in 1972 and died in 1985.