Maximum Throughput? maximum availablity? It's more like None-put and non-availability, if you happen to be the customer that is turned away for days at a time. The customers couldn't care less about your fancy new track machinery or new "out of face" maintenance needs. They just want their stuff sent to market, or their people transported - on the day THEY want it done. So how "optimum" is it if you have to turn business away to actually be able to use your fancy new optimized track machines?

A common lament heard here and there, used to be "If it weren't for all those pesky trains, we could keep the track in perfect shape!". Nowadays, they make all those pesky trains go away for days at a time - and still it aint' perfect - risk of sun kinks and all when it ain't even 100 degrees outside. That happens because they now have to put the track down when the 'preplanned maintenance window' dictates - not when the weather is right - hence temperature stresses are not balanced - hence greater risk of sun-kinks. How the he!! is that 'Optimum"?

Of course if some bigshot heard that pesky train lament, you would get your hardhat yelled off your head; or if he was kindly enough, he would explain that the railroad does not get paid for purdy track; but it DOES get paid for hauling stuff (and people). Running trains makes money, while fixing track spends it - hence the priority was to keep the trains rolling, even if needed maintenance cost a bit more and was harder to do.

Turning revenue producing business away, just so that track gang manpower can be sharply reduced (ie, lost jobs), and over-mechanizing the process so much (more lost jobs) that trains can't keep running; is penny wise and pound foolish in my opinion. Every time you give away business by default like that (or for any reason); that business doesn't just wait around for you - IT GOES SOMEWHERE ELSE ! And usually stays somewhere else! It's Gone! Sadly, UP has done that by the megatons in the last two decades.

So when a company continues to behave this way, even while their market share continues to shrink - even with all the natural advantages that railroads have - don't you suppose that IS "Utterly Pathetic" behavior.

If you were a stockholder with any brains, you'd certainly think so. If you were a customer (brains or no), you'd know so! If you were an employee with any brains, you'd certainly be concerned about your future - and the "Utterly Pathetic" reasons it may be in jeopardy.

Perhaps you will notice the pathos - After you've sat in the bread line across the way - watching all those trucks come out of that factory you used to switch. Yes - for the last two decades, the overall behavior of the UP has been Utterly Pathetic (of course, they ain't the only ones)!

Even more pathetic, is what it will ultimately and inevitably lead to - and has already to some extent (one more nail in America's economic coffin).