Earl Wrote:
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> The agreement employees who stayed sure do have it
> rough. New locomotives by the thousands, new
> yards, new shops, new machines, new business,
> track better than it has been in decades and
> continuing benefits when furloughed.

I'm not sure that you understand what being furloughed entails. Once your medical coverage runs out and your unemployments benefits expire, you have nothing. One of the problems that some furloughed employees have faced is that when they're recalled for a week and then furloughed again, they actually earn less than they would have had they stayed furloughed, because of the waiting period before their unemployment benefits restart.

For the most part, those "new" things you mentioned would've happened no matter which railroad ended up absorbing Southern Pacific. But since you brought it up, the only "new" yard that I know of on the former SP is the Jerry Davis Yard in Roseville, which since its opening has been plaqued with design flaws which hinder efficiency and safety. The only "new" shop on the ex-SP that I know of is at West Colton, but that was planned for long before UP ever came in. The "new" locomotives and machines (and I'm assuming you're referring to track machines?) would've happened anyway. For example, the low emission, low horsepower locomotives came as a result of government sponsorship, and the high horsepower ones still would've been bought (remember, SP kept buying new and remanufactured locomotives right up to the end). Track machines are typically leased, so old ones are periodically replaced with new ones. "New" business speaks for itself. The "better" track seen today is just a normal part of maintaining a railroad. You might recall that shortly after the SP/UP merger, UP instituted a 32% system-wide cut in Maintenance of Way budgets. They were especially hard-felt in ex-SP territory after 2+ decades of less than maximum track maintenance that was brought on by a combination of various executive decisions - such as taking earnings from the railroad and using them for non-railroad things instead of reinvesting them in the property - something not unheard of in the railroad industry. Need to save some short-term money? Cut your track maintenance budgets now, and worry about the consequences later. It'll be someone else's problem by then. After the merger, the entire concept of how to maintain track changed. SP had a lot of small local gangs that were reduced to just a few men or completely eliminated, while UP prefers to use larger Region and Syetem Gangs and outside contractors, with maybe only a couple of UP MofW employees (generally foremen) remaining as a local gang with no chance of being able to keep up with the required maintenence. Some folks might recall the hundreds and hundreds of miles of 10 and 25 MPH slow orders that the FRA placed on many of the ex-SP mainlines during the early 2000s, all the result of the change in maintenance policy. So because of that, UP had no choice but to start spending money on upgrading track and fixing deferred maintenance.

> I don't know how they've withstood these insults
> to their storied past. Surely they would have
> been much better off had the merger never happened
> and they had continued their steady decline.

Whether the SP would've ended up being merged intact into another carrier, or various lines being picked up by multiple carries, will always remain a mystery.