OOPS - In responding to OPRRMS in the "Stupidity In Action" thread below, I intended not hijack that very worthy thread, but to start a new one - my bad!

OPRRMS wrote:
> I'm just one of those stoopud railroad employees that John Kneiling used to write about.


NOT !

I wouldn't worry about John Kneiling's usually absurd opinions too much; as he was a stoopud doooofuss himself!

It was his silly journalistic influence upon congress which, more than anything else outside of gov't and corporate bureaucracy, that destroyed railroading as we knew it. This is especially true of his absurd notion that what he called loose car railroading, and all branch lines and industrial leads, should be abandoned as being too expensive a market to serve.

Too expensive? Maybe, but that was the point of Teddy Roosevelt's gov't regulation in the first place - to assure a cross subsidization between the easy part of the job and the hard part. The job being universally available common carriage; which was itself, a critical part of what made America a great economic power.

That part of regulation should have been retained. The only part of regulation that was hurting railroads was the uneven application of rules between the modes, and excessive red tape in adjusting tariffs to changing markets. But the 1978 Staggers Act went way beyond that!

Since the staggers act, railroads were allowed to forget about that cross subsidization, and do just the easy part of the common carriage job - and that they did. Now, they are a mere shadow of their former selves. Common carriage, the original intent of Congress in chartering railroads in the first place, is now more or less a lost cause, as railroads now "cherry pick" only the low hanging fruit - leaving the rest to rot.

Along with the loss of local "loose car" service, went 60% - 80% of railroading jobs as well. Moreover, railroads are now totally irrelevant to most ordinary Americans, and even irrelevant to most freight shippers! They still perform a useful function of course, but only for a tiny fraction of the economy. And even most of that tiny fraction must use a truck first, before they can use the railroad! But with truckers happily queued up at their loading docks, they usually forget railroads even exist. It didn't use to be like this!

Now, it turns out, that we are being told in the trade journals that aggregating loose cars into long trains is still and always was the most renumerative part business and that the bulk of the business now, inter-modal, has always had very slim margins. The problem being the high cost of local drayage sucks up all the available profits.

Well Duh! --- & Double Duh!

I never could understand how a single switch crew going out and gathering 30-40 or so loads (equal to 50-60 truckloads) could be more expensive than the several dozen truckers needed to dray the same to an inter-modal yard. Now, with the needed infrastructure gone, railroads will remain irrelevant to most Americans and most shippers - forever.

The 800,000 railroading jobs lost to this insanity are also lost forever. Thank you Mr Kneiling!

Well, I had better leave it at that and get back to work. At least I still have a job!

OPB