Let's see, the Staggers Act. Before 1980, railroading was pretty much a dying industry. Most of the railroads of the northeast had gone bankrupt and been merged into Conrail, which needed lots of government money every year to subsidize its freight operations. The Rock Island was abandoned in 1980, as was the Milwaukee's western extension.

1980 was the year of the WP's Hayward wreck, caused by managers throwing out the rulebook and sending a train out of Stockton with not enough fuel to make Oakland, then having another train push the one that died.

Let's compare that to now.

Kneiling contended that railroading's strength was moving a lot of stuff, not moving a little stuff. Sorta like what, say, BNSF does on the Transcon, moves train after train of stuff, or the Powder River coal lines do with all that coal, which, BTW has resulted, since 1980 in a railroad that went from single track to triple track in places.

Business has been lost, but a lot more has been gained. Remember railfanning Donner in 1980, admittedly a slow business year, but there were times when there were one or two freights a day over the Hill, plus Amtrak.

Railroading today is a lot healthier than it was in 1970s. It is being done differently today, and it's not as good as the "old days", but it was never as good as the old days, the old hands would have told you in 1960 that it was a lot better when they hired out.

I don't necessarily agree with Kneiling that boxcar railroading is a dinosaur. It seems that the rails make a fair bit of money on it when they do it right, but he is right that the strength of a railroad is getting all those boxcars or containers onto a big train and getting them someplace else.