Robert K. Pattison, former LIRR president, dies

Robert K. Pattison, a third-generation railroad man who served a bumpy tenure from 1976 to 1978 leading the Long Island Railroad, one of the country's busiest commuter-rail systems, died of a heart ailment May 12 at Burke Health Care Center in Virginia. He was 88.

For much of his early career, Pattison ascended through the engineering ranks of the New York Central Railroad. The financially troubled New York Central and the Pennsylvania Railroad lines merged in 1968 to form Penn Central, whose declaration of bankruptcy soon afterward led to the birth of Conrail and Amtrak.

Through those rocky years, Pattison was general manager of Penn Central's and then Conrail's metropolitan rail service around New York, which operated the Harlem, Hudson and New Haven commuter lines that carried hundreds of thousands of suburban passengers.

In July 1976, he was tapped to serve as president and general manager of the LIRR, succeeding the ailing former chief, Walter Schlager, who died the next month.

Pattison was initially praised for his broad experience in engineering and operations for the New York Central. The LIRR had long attracted criticism from commuters and politicians for haphazard service, and complaints worsened under Pattison's watch during the paralyzing snowstorms of 1977 and 1978.

The New York Times reported "frequent equipment failures, canceled trains, indifferent ticket collectors and mysterious unscheduled stops" as factors contributing to the intense passenger complaints that ultimately reached the office of Democratic New York Gov. Hugh Carey.

After his dismissal, Pattison told the Times, "The operation of any commuter line has almost as many political problems as it does operations ones. It's equally important to satisfy both the political and the public entities. And there are a very few places where any of them are satisfied."

Robert Karl Pattison, a Virginia resident, was born in Ashtabula, Ohio. His father was a conductor and union steward on the New York Central Railroad, and his paternal grandfather was an engineer on the New York Central's 20th Century Limited.

During World War II, Pattison did civil engineering work for the Navy in the Pacific. In 1947, he received a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and then joined the New York Central Railroad in Cleveland as a construction inspector.

His first wife, Ruth Griffith Pattison, whom he married in 1948, died in 1986. In 1993, he married Marie Middleton. Besides his wife, survivors include two daughters from his first marriage, Cheryl Pattison of Thornton, Colo., and Dianne Pattison of Olathe, Kan.

Pattison had spent his post-LIRR years in the Washington, D.C., area. Despite his public firing, he reportedly retained a solid reputation as a knowledgeable railroad hand. He became president of the railroad consulting firm Parsons Brinckerhoff Centec and a top executive with its parent firm, Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas.

Before retiring in 2001, he participated in major railroad design and construction projects, including a U.S. study to improve railroad access to defense-missile silos, and work on passenger and freight lines in Morocco and Sudan.