>Diverging--present participle of di·verge (Verb)
1. (of a road, route, or line) Separate from another route, esp. a main one, and go in a different direction.

Diverge, from Merriam Webster's Collegiate: "to extend from a common point in different directions". It comes from the Latin dis, separate, + vergere, to bend. Dis-, which also appears frequently as di-, is related to the Latin word duo, two. In other words, it means "to bend away from".

Converge, on the other hand, comes from the Latin cum, with, + vergere (in English, the Latin cum has evolved into con quite frequently), in other words, "to bend together".

So when two tracks separate at a switch, they are diverging. When they join, they are converging. It depends on your coign of vantage to the situation (i.e. which direction you are going -- even when not speaking about tracks). Thus the UP managment, in speaking of joining tracks as "diverging", is demonstrating a distinct dearth of cranial cognative capacity and lax levels of learning.

>Where does one draw the line between not having confidence in its own crews and the UP doesn't give a damn about safety?

When you get qualified over a territory, you know all the ins and outs of it. Thereafter, if you run over that territory only occasionally, you can get rusty. At one time, the UP wanted to have one extraboard in Roseville, which meant that you could get called for Sparks, Dunsmuir, Oakland, or Fresno at random. In this sort of situation, the problem becomes one of keeping current on all this territory, and the UP is loath to pay for refamiliarization trips. Fortunately, the rules and training department prevailed, and this super-extrbaord wasn't instituted. However, the railroad culture which had developed among the crafts over the last 150 years -- I'm not speaking about labor contract provisions here -- has been thrown away by management beginning with the 1985 manning agreement, frequently agressively so. Essentially, the rrs had to start over from square one with employee training and attitudes, so management has little trust in those whom they supervise (not that the managers themselves are all that much more skilled or experienced). It's not a question of today's railroaders intelligence levels being lower than in the past; they aren't. It's one of the lact of exposure to the old heads' attitudes and working culture. I can't believe some of the stuff I've heard over the radio over the last 10-15 years (nor can I believe the severity of slack run-ins and run-outs).

And BTW, the UP gives a damn about safety only to the extent of avoiding lawsuits (that its, having to pay out money) and "harassment" by the FRA.