Oh Puleeeese!

I will grant you that UP probably does at least know which end to stick a cigar in! Unlike some of our political favorites!

But think! How the Heck do you get all the wheels on one side staying on the rails, while half the wheels on the other half go off! In all my years of technical accident investigation, I never saw one wheel of an axle off, but what the other was not off also.

For this to happen, either the check guage of every other axle suddenly shifted (absurd); or more likely, the rail shifted out of guage under the locomotive. Even then, how did one wheel of an axle stay one with the other off. If it was the track guage spreading, IT WAS UP's fault!

I suppose there is a first time for everything. But at this point, the whole story must be viewed as inaccurately reported, or at least too incomplete to make any rational guesses.

And so what if a passenger train goes in the hole! It often results in less delay, than if it held the main. Almost always, delay is minimized when the first train to arrive goes in the siding, no matter what kind of train it is.

What gives UP bad marks is stopping passenger trains at a siding when the nearest opposing train is still several sidings away - definitely a less than an optimum meet. This is sometimes mandated by too many trains too long for most sidings in a district. When a siding that is long enough to pass excessive length trains is also the optimim point (or near it) for a meet with a shorter train, the short train (Amtrak) will always take it in the shorts. Mind you, this also screws up a lot of UP freight traffic as well, not just Amtrak.

Why give UP bad marks for this! Because there is absolutely no excuse for running excessive length trains on a regular basis. It's a bad business practice. But even worse than this or other incompetences, is when a dispatcher is simply instructed to hold a contracted passenger train for totally inexplicable reasons, which never happened on the UP before Amtrak started hauling express. UP was the firstest and loudest to squawk at this - then began the persistant delays for Amtrak trains. A quinkydink - I don't think so Tim!

OPB