History Buff Wrote:
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>
> Anyone who has read Trains Magazine for a long
> time will know that its columnists have taken
> sides on political issues. John Kneiling, the
> "Professional Iconoclast," comes to mind. His
> columns were extremely repulsive, but I only took
> them to be his views only and not those of the
> publication. In fact, Trains Magazine also
> published commentary from guest writers, many of
> whom delved into political subjects.
>
> Since the railroads' earliest beginnings in North
> America, railroads and politics have gone together
> like beaches and summer. Trains Magazine would
> not be reflecting the real world if it avoided
> politics entirely.

John Kneiling was repulsive at times, and at times he was prescient... He was no friend of RR workers or their unions, he was no friend of the regulations, market or safety, and felt that in his market "utopia" all of these thngs were absolute "evil" incarnate, is my recollection. But, he was prescient in the coming intermodal revolution, which daily sees tens of thousands of his articulated double stack container cars loaded everyday.

Kneiling had many good points about the failures of the ICC era "market" regulation, the detrimental effects on RR investment and ROI, which distorted economic competition between modes, and cost producers and consumers a considerable "tax" on shipments and purchases, raising prices arbitrarily in many cases, to protect us from exploitation by potential (and, at one time real) "evil" rail monopolies, exploiting captive shippers, which was actually kind of a false problem, by the mid 20th century.

Today, because of the STB has, in "my" own somewhat "iconoclastic" "competitive" efficient market point of view, allowed too much "over-consolidation" creating "too little" inter regional rail market competition, and we again find ourselves having a problem with monopolistic price discrimination, and poor "take it or leave it" service. This has its own cost and "efficiency" issues for shippers, consumers, and negative "externalities" that affect our society, in things like more trucks tearing up our freeways, with society subsidizing those costs.

Kneiling was not my "cup of tea" as to many of his narrow minded and extreme opinions. But, with regard to some important issues, Kneiling was a keen observer, who made some prescient predictions of the coming changes, for better or worse (depending on your "opinion" of how some of this has all turned out) to the RR industry.