Robert B. Watson was born at Altoona on June 29, 1931, and graduated from Penn State with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 1953. As a consequence of being in the R.O.T.C. program, he was also commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers and served in active duty in Railway Battalions during the end stage of the Korean War. He had begun working for the PRR in college and returned to the company full time in 1955, following the normal career path leading from Junior Engineer to Motive Power Inspector, Enginehouse Foreman, Assistant Trainmaster/Assistant Road Foreman of Engines, and Master Mechanic, while being rotated around the system. Watson completed his education by attending the Yale University Graduate School’s Railway Operations & Economics Program under a Strathcona Fellowship, graduating with a Certificate of Transportation in 1958. In this program he studied under Prof. Kent T. Healy, one of the mid-twentieth century’s leading experts in railroad operations and management. In February 1966 he became Master Mechanic at Philadelphia.

Based on his accomplishments, the company chose Watson to be its Coordinator on the Northeast Corridor Demonstration Project in September 1966. This program of the Johnson Administration was the first attempt to develop high-speed rail passenger service in imitation of the famous Shinkansen or “Bullet Trains” recently introduced in Japan. The program involved both upgrading the existing track and signaling infrastructure to take the extra wear and tear of high-speed operation and developing high-speed equipment that eventually debuted in 1969 as the first Metroliners. Watson was a member of the team that developed a high-speed test track between New Brunswick and Trenton, N.J., and ran numerous tests with a train of four experimental cars built by the Budd Company for the U.S. Department of Commerce, later the Department of Transportation. The Metroliners were rushed into production without adequate testing and debugging, and American high-speed rail has continued to lag behind its European and Asian counterparts.

With the completion of the design phase of the Northeast Corridor Project, Watson left what was now the bankrupt and doomed Penn Central Transportation Company at the end of 1971 and joined the Philadelphia consulting engineering firm of LTK Engineering Services, formerly Louis T. Klauder and Associates, where he worked on a number of projects related to rail passenger service and rolling stock until his retirement in December 1998. Watson has been active in the Pennsylvania Railroad Technical & Historical Society and other groups of former PRR managers and has authored several articles on the history of PRR mechanical engineering and rolling stock development.