> Teddy Roosevelt where are you now.?

Anymore, they'd run a rugged populist President like him out on a rail - no matter the electoral vote. But I guess nothing ever changes!


> bankruptcy and mass abandonments were not fun.

But neither is driving highways literally choked with trucks; nor is it fun for a small business to be denied rail service, just because today's Haaaavaad Business School MBA railroad managers can't bring quite as much down to net serving it, as they suppose they could serving the big guys; nor is it fun watching railroads deliberately drive business away; or fumble their service commitments time and time again; just because these same ninnys don't know how to actually run a railroad.

They once could, and did run like a fine Swiss watch - routinely. But that was in a day when there was lots of competition between railroads, and lots of pride in the work. There is a huge correlation there, I think. The mergers did not fix any of railroading's problems; just buried them deeper into a bigger even more unmanageable corporations.

Neither did the Staggers Act. True it did ease many unfair regulations; but it also went too far, cutting the proverbial string, that worked in concert with the wind, to keep the proverbial kite flying.

Now - the least fun of all is to to face the sad facts; that with the trucking industry choking the highways, trying to carry nearly 90% of the traffic, the rail industry has become fundamentally irrelevant in today's society.

What is left now is but a Ghost....

of what once was.