By God, Railwayist, I was beginning to miss your posts and the usual firestorm they generate!  

Now to sit back and watch the fun!

Me too.  I can't begin to comment on that.  RAILWAYIST has outdone himself this time.  That he is incredibly wrong and uninformed doesn't seem to matter to him or a couple of others who are quick to defend his blather.  He doesn't even make it as a foamer.

SG>"By God, Railwayist, I was beginning to miss your posts and the usual firestorm they generate!  

Now to sit back and watch the fun!"

   Shhhhhhh.  Be vewwy, vewwy quiet.  He's hunting Wailwoadists!

   Quit hogging the popcorn.

ANOTHER AWESOME POST regardless of what other may think!

All it will take is a great big tax increase to pay for all the subisdies.

JF>"ANOTHER AWESOME POST regardless of what other may think!"

   Not that you're willing to put your name to it, and that's a fac', Jack.  Willis is one up on you there.

  In another context, with another audience, this might have meant something, but here it just means the poor guy can't entirely tell the difference between fantasy and reality.  He's taking ideas that may have some points, and making them laughingstocks.  Hey, by the way,  how much does ATA pay for this sort of thing?

Golly, it's kind of fun to watch some of you other folks mix it up.  Anonymity in cyberspace sure does encourage a greater degree of irresponsibility on the part of some.  It's pretty easy to be preposterous when you don't have to stand up for your so-called opinions.  And from a substantive basis, as anmccaff suggests, espousing fantasy without labeling it as such does little for the cause being advocated, no matter how good a cause it might be.  Have fun, and play nicely, kiddies.

RAILWAYIST's latest post reminds me of 1930's ideas of what an airliner of the 1980's might look like.  Much larger than, for instance, a Boeing 247 or Lockheed Electra, but still with Clark-Y airfoils, piston engines, propellers (lots of them, because nobody looked even ten years ahead to multi-row radial engines) and straight wings.  Of course, technology proceeded in quite a different direction.

DB>"RAILWAYIST's latest post reminds me of 1930's ideas of what an airliner of the 1980's might look like."

   Or 50's "Popular Science"-type world-of-the-future stuff, with the nasty emphasis on cars and planes removed.  I've got a February 1950 "Science and Mechanics" magazine with a giant canard seaplane; makes the "Spruce Goose" look like a bathtub duck, at least on the cover illustration.  (The actual proposed dimensions were realistic.  Neat design.)  I'd bet it would have connected to Mikey's Dream Train.

I've been successfully ignoring you for some time now, RAILWAYIST, but your "defense" of Disney World requires a comment.  DISNEY WORLD IS A PRIVATE VENTURE!  Its shuttles and its monorail do not have to be economic.  They don't have to do anything but serve the purposes of the Walt Disney Co.  If it did not provide shuttle transfers from the parking lots to the Magic Kingdom, how the hell many people do you think would travel to Orlando to drop millions into the WED bank accounts?  Now I shall go back to ignoring you, and let others set you straight if they wish when you get back to your cheerleading and mindless maundering about things you obviously know little about.

I would guess this was written in 1951?

No, RAILWAYIST's fertile imagination dates it as 2051.

MX>"What makes Disney World/Disney Land/Euro Disney/Tokyo Disney, Six Flags/Kings Island/Cedar Point/Magic Mountain amusement parks so enjoyable?"

   The temptation to simply think "Huh.  He really can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality" is strong.  Do you really think the only thing that separates Disney world from Troy is the choo-choo circling it, though?  Prolly not.  At least, I hope not.

MW"It starts with a RAIL-TRANSPORT-INFRASTRUCTURE-BASED-PLAN."

   Monorails of the Alweg variety are emphatically not rail, and not particularly efficient because of that, but that is neither here nor there.  Are you saying the Mouse wouldn't be enough of a draw by himself?  That if the Choo-choo broke, people would not come?  I believe that is a testable hypothesis, ain't it?  The thing has been out of service, right?

MW>"Disney World in Orlando has a bus shuttle on the outskirts of the complex to and from its resort hotels but all transport within the park is monorail, trestle, roller-coaster and surface rail-based."

   From Ball Rd to Katella, the longest side of Disneyland, is just a mile, isn't it?  A mile and a quarter, max, longest dimension?  Of course that is walkable.  I don't know the dimensions of the Orlando complex offhand.  Google, here I come.  Huhh.  Almost the same size...wassup wit that?  Looks like they found a working formula there.  A little less than a square mile for the park proper.  I'm also looking at the size of ...well, I guess it really isn't "infrastructure" since it's off to the side.  "Extrastucture" might work better  It's huge...."sprawling", even.  For all the emphasis on rail, real and mono, in the areas the tourists see, it looks like a lot of spread-out facilities behind the scene.

MW>The parks are PEDESTRIAN-FRIENDLY and are scaled to human size instead of automobile size sprawl.

    Yup.  they also cost a hell of a lot more to run than your average, say county fair or mall, or CBD, despite the fact that, being fun kinda places, they are able to run much of the infrastructure with a steady flow-though of relatively low-paid amateurs.  How much, exactly does it cost to run, and why?  Is that translatable outside the fence?

MW>Supplies and maintenance personnel at Disney World Orlando use a subway system with rubber wheeled electric carts for transport.

    So do some malls, if memory serves, although the "subway" is actually an open area.  If I remember right, the same is true for parts of DW; the "subway" is closer to "basement".

MW>Traffic and amusement ride control, communications, security are -super-computer- based. And its profitable too $$$

    Nope.  It isn't...or at the very least, you've come no where close to demonstrating that it is -by itself- profitable.

MW>If Orlando or any other small/medium or large city in the US were at least 10% as efficient as Disney World it would be a 'giant leap for sprawlkind' ...away from the oil-trough...

   Yup.  But if you really want to do that, you have to think of the realities of bang-for-the-buck.  How much it costs, what you get for that.

OK, that was a huge waste of time written at 0527. Write something constructive for once - or not at all would be better.

Just for the record, times that things are posted are GMT.

Perhaps if I had read some of RAILWAYISTS previous works, I'd better understand the vitriol found in the various responses.

Is it simply the fact that he sees things differently from the chosen leaders of our present-day domestic industry?

Is it because he dares to repeatedly utter the 'P' word ("Passenger")?!

Are some of you bothered by his insistent use of anachronistic terminology (e.g., "Pullman" or "telegraph") or desire for technological advancement (such as near-universal electrification)?

Is it, perhaps, an unbridled fear based on the misguided belief that our railroads have no intrinsic value, apart from their ability to generate a financial profit?  I find that fascinating, since we taxpayers are now busy spending fairly large sums of money (although minuscule in relative terms) attempting to replicate a small portion of the streetcar/interurban/regional/intercity passenger railway services we once enjoyed - operations which were originally abandoned primarily because they didn't make money!

So...what's the problem?!

I'd really like to understand, too.  I'm not just trying to stoke the fire.

Mr. Kaufman (or whomever), would you kindly explain?

Thank you very much,

Garl B. Latham

Dallas, Texas

I, of course, meant "RAILWAYIST's," not "RAILWAYISTS."

Please pardon the typo!

Garl

Mr. Latham:  My apologies.  I inadvertently hit "add" before finishing my reply.  We're almost finished.  Services get dropped because they don't make money.  You're right about that.  I note also that Chrysler no longer builds Plymouts or DeSotos, American Motors no longer exists, nor do Studebaker-Packard or any number of other once-popular makes of automobiles.  They all were discontinued because they did not make a return on investment.  That's the way economics works in our society.  Unlike the Cato Institute, Reason Foundation and other organizations of that type, I do not have a fundamental philosophical objection to public subsidies or investment.  As I said earlier, I believe we can have whatever and as much as we are prepared to pay for.  In my comments on most of RAILWAYIST's blogs, I merely make the point that he never considers the cost when advocating a return to an era that no longer exists - if it ever really did. His use of arcane language is not an issue, I assure you.  His advocacy of completely unrealistic things is an issue for me.

Perhaps I have been wrong in my belief that this is a forum for competing ideas.  I put mine out there with my name for anyone to challenge.  You have used your name.  I do object to the propensity of some to hide behind anonymous screen names - as though they were afraid to be associated with their own ideas.

Others may have other views of RAILWAYIST's blogs.  They are free to speak for themselves.

Mr. Latham:  My apologies, but my original reply to you seems to have gone into cyberspace.  If it shows up, my apologies for the double response.  Anyway, I shall reply to you because you specifically asked me to do so by name.  This is subject to the disclaimer that I speak for no one but myself.

"Perhaps if I had read some of RAILWAYISTS previous works, I'd better understand the vitriol found in the various responses."

Sorry, but I don't see "vitriol" at all.  Sharp disagreements?  Yes.

"Is it simply the fact that he sees things differently from the chosen leaders of our present-day domestic industry?"

I question your use of the term "chosen leaders."  The leaders of the railroads all were selected by the board of directors of those companies, as is required of all publicly owned companies.  I detect a pejorative tone to your question, and if I'm wrong, I apologize.  

"Is it because he dares to repeatedly utter the 'P' word ("Passenger")?"  

I speak only for myself and assure you that referring to passengers in no way is an issue.  Discussion of passenger service issues is just one of many issues that are fair game at this blog site.

"Are some of you bothered by his insistent use of anachronistic terminology (e.g., "Pullman" or "telegraph") or desire for technological advancement (such as near-universal electrification)?"  

RAILWAYIST's use of language is of no concern to me; most of it is taken directly from old advertisements and monographs, some going back eight decades.

"Is it, perhaps, an unbridled fear based on the misguided belief that our railroads have no intrinsic value, apart from their ability to generate a financial profit?  I find that fascinating, since we taxpayers are now busy spending fairly large sums of money (although minuscule in relative terms) attempting to replicate a small portion of the streetcar/interurban/regional/intercity passenger railway services we once enjoyed - operations which were originally abandoned primarily because they didn't make money!"

What kind of profit is there other than "financial?"  I am unaware of any "unbridled fear," as you put it, that railroads have no intrinsic value aside from generating a financial profit.  You state that taxpayers are now spending large amounts to replicate the various transit and intercity passenger services once enjoyed by ended because they failed to make money.  First, taxpayers are spending virtually nothing on freight rail service, although they are paying billions to improve the highway system that rail competitors use but do not pay their allocable share of the cost of building and maintaining those highways.  Rail passenger service never has made money.  For many years it was provided by railroad companies that cross-subsidized it with profit from their freight operations.  As freight profits shrank as a result of public policies (effective subsidization of trucking, regulation), they no longer could engage in the passenger business.  The current Amtrak was the politically doable solution, even though direct subsidies to railroads for operating passenger service would have been more sensible and effective.  Had the railroads not ended their passenger services, many more railroads would have gone bankrupt in addition to Penn Central, Milwaukee Road, Rock Island, Lehigh Valley, Reading, Central of New Jersey, Erie-Lackawanna, New Haven, and others.

I've now replied to your questions.  I have one of my own.  What is your motivation in asking the questions you ask?  You'll have to pardon my skepticism when you say you aren't trying to stoke the fire.  I think that's exactly what you are doing.  That's alright, though.  I have strongly held views about transportation issues and I don't avoid debate over them.  

So...what's the problem?!

I'd really like to understand, too.  I'm not just trying to stoke the fire.

Mr. Kaufman (or whomever), would you kindly explain?

Thank you very much,

GL>"Perhaps if I had read some of RAILWAYISTS previous works, I'd better understand the vitriol found in the various responses."

     Nahh.  You'd have to see all of them, including the ones under his real name.  The same things, overandoverandover, without ever answering the questions his messages raise.  Then you might get it.

    Some of the individual posts by themselves are interesting, and even useful, as long as you remember they are nostalgia and fantasy.  I suspect we could do with a few less of them here, but, just for an example, his post on the 497 brought out information straight from the horse's mouth that I hadn't seen elsewhere, and I had looked.  Mostly, though, it's crap calling us back in time to an imaginary history.  If I wanted that, I'd read Turtledove; he does it better.

    He does this too much, it annoys Larry.  Larry says something.  The AnonaCows, the anonymous cowards who hide behind their monitors, call Larry a meanyhead.  Lather, rinse, and repeat.  Again.  Again.  It gets boring., so some other people call Larry, and me, and anybody else who thinks that people shouldn't waste each others time with delusional thinking, meanyheads.  Everyone growls at each other.  Railwayist is hiding, meanwhile, or waiting for the dopamine levels to cycle up again, or the phase of the moon to change.  Things calm down.

    Then it cycles again.

GL>"Is it simply the fact that he sees things differently from the chosen leaders of our present-day domestic industry?"

    Leaving the needless loaded wording off, yeah, that's part of it.  Railroad execs and Union leaders, and shippers and consignees,  and commuters and taxpayers tend to see things somewhat realistically, although each from their own point of view.  They are difficult people to bullshit, in other words.  Since some people's ideas on What America Needs in Passenger Rail depends on a liberal application of fertilizer, this creates natural conflicts.

GL>Is it because he dares to repeatedly utter the 'P' word ("Passenger")?!

    No, it's because he fantasizes about how things got this way, about what we could do to change things, and how much the different alternatives might cost.  He does so in a partial vacuum: the parts of history that don't support his ideas he ignores or re-writes.  Ditto for Economics.  Ditto for operations.  Ditto, ditto, ditto.

     It's like listening to Rush Limbaugh on crank.

GL"Are some of you bothered by his insistent use of anachronistic terminology (e.g., "Pullman" or "telegraph") or desire for technological advancement (such as near-universal electrification)?"

      I would be more surprised if he didn't use old-timey vocabulary while doing a nostalgia shtick, wouldn't you?  It'd kinda jar, that would.

  As for "technological advancement" what's so "advanced" about using a technology in places where it is financially, ecologically, and esthetically unsound?  Me, I call that "primitive."  Childlike thinking, that is.

GL>"Is it, perhaps, an unbridled fear based on the misguided belief that our railroads have no intrinsic value, apart from their ability to generate a financial profit?"

    There's a name for that kind of argument, you know, and it isn't a respectable one.  Wanna restate it in neutral terms?

GL>" I find that fascinating, since we taxpayers are now busy spending fairly large sums of money (although minuscule in relative terms) attempting to replicate a small portion of the streetcar/interurban/regional/intercity passenger railway services we once enjoyed - operations which were originally abandoned primarily because they didn't make money!"

    Three things wrong there.  First, the numbers are only small because the systems are, relatively.  Compared to any other means of moving things or people, the costs are enormous for many systems, and getting worse rather than better over time.   Signing on to that isn't getting on the bandwagon, it's fighting your way through the rats to get on the sinking ship.

    Next, you gotta tell Railroadist this "economics" thing.  He thinks it was all woo-woo conspiracies.

    Finally, although economic factors obviously played a big part in removing rail, so did political ones, and local and federal  governments did a lot to kill the transit and interurban systems.  For a long time - nearly 50 years- trains were the official evil plutocratic monopoly for your average demagogue, and the Right didn't help either.

GL>So...what's the problem?!

     Fantasizers, bullshitters.  Astroturfers.  True Believers.  Engineers, and engineers, and engineers: operators, mechanicals, civils.  Moss-backed fogeys.  Air-headed visionaries.  Rent-seekers.  Ayn-Rand-would-be-God-if-there-were-one Liberhoovians.  Management.  Union men.  Goons of Management and Union Thugs.   Salesmen for transit, who stand, win, lose, or draw, to make a hell of a lot of money whether they do.  All in one tiny, little, itsy-bitsy blog site.

That second to last line should be "...whether they do the job or not."

  My apologies.

anhmccaff:  It was getting kind of lonely there, for a while.  Thanks for jumping in.  The "other" side, whichever that is, will undoubtedly cudgel you abou the head and shoulders for not playing nicely.

Meanwhile, I see RAILWAYIST is back with his incendiary language and his fantasy of subsidies.  I also note that Garl B. Latham, asker of questions and seeker of truth, has not replied to my polite effort to respond to his loaded questions.  I would have expected him at least to claim with wounded innocence thqt he meant no offense at all.  Yeah, sure, and I'm the long missing heir to the Czarist Russian throne.

RAILWAYIST, I'm continually puzzled by your references to "subsidized freeways"  My impression has been that highways are supported primarily by user fees, in the form of tolls (lots of tollways around Chicago, but not around the Motor City) and federal and state gas taxes.  Indeed, the issues in recent years have been quite the other way - whether gasoline tax revenues should be tapped to subsidize other things, such as rail transit.  Also, how to continue to support highways when cars are fueled not by petroleum, but by electricity off the grid; the idea of taxing miles driven, not, or in addition to, fuel purchases, has been floated to get around that.  Again, a user fee.

Now, subsidized trucking, I agree with you.  But, trucking isn't subsidized from the general revenue fund, but by the rest of us, who pay user fees disproportionate to the damage that we do to the road relative to those paid by trucks.  The AASHTO has an "equivalent single axle load" formula that highway engineers use to calculate the load on a roadway, and therefore the cumulative damage, done by a vehicle passage.  If you run the numbers, you find that an 80,000 pound 18-wheeler does 8000 times the damage that a two-ton car does, yet it doesn't pay 8000 times the user fees.  That's the subsidy to trucking, paid by those of us who drive cars.

DaveB:  Absolutely correct.  When I worked in the Office of the Secretary of Transportation many years ago, we looked at various ways of funding highways and even how to tap into the highway trust fund for transit purposes (in a Republican administration, by the way).  We decided the gasoline tax was as close to a universal tax as you could find in our society and that it should be left alone - then.

By the way, if truckers were to add a sixth axle, as is proposed in some legislative proposals that would allow them to go as high as 97,000 lbs. from today's 80,000 lb. maximum, their loads would be spread so that a 97,000 lb. truck would do less damage to the highway than the current 80,000 lb. truck.  RAILWAYIST somehow never thinks about this in his flailing about, and when it is pointed out to him, he simply ignores it.  Maybe he's on to something: just ignore reality and other things that displease you.

RAILWAYIST, I'm continually puzzled by your references to "subsidized freeways"  My impression has been that highways are supported primarily by user fees, in the form of tolls (lots of tollways around Chicago, but not around the Motor City) and federal and state gas taxes.  Indeed, the issues in recent years have been quite the other way - whether gasoline tax revenues should be tapped to subsidize other things, such as rail transit.  Also, how to continue to support highways when cars are fueled not by petroleum, but by electricity off the grid; the idea of taxing miles driven, not, or in addition to, fuel purchases, has been floated to get around that.  Again, a user fee.

   Repellent as it may sound, I'm basicallly with Mike Willis on this.  The highway trust fund was established out of general revenue obligations - essentially by the old, rail-and-urban based economy; all the "repayments" have in turn been spent.  The base capital was never repaid.  That allowed the shift from mostly rail to mixed to go to far, too fast.

   To put it another way, the roads in the "Sun Belt" were paid for by the "Rust Belt", and that helped encourage people and business to move away from the very places that paid to allow it.

Sorry anmccaff, but I agree with DaveB.  Until the Interstate and Defense Highway System was authorized more than 50 years ago, there was no federal earmarked tax.  General appropriations went to the states for construction of "federal highways."  The Interstate system marked the first really big involvement of the feds in what always had been a state function; it required earmarked money, and that was the Highway Trust Fund, filled by fuel taxes, taxes on truck tires, and other excise taxes.  The federal formula originally was 90-10 federal for new construction, but only 50-50 for maintenance.  With a deal like that, which do you think the states chose?  Right.  That's why we have the crumbling I-80 in Pennsylvania and similar rutted roads around the country (in Arkansas, trucks were requested to stay in the left lane, presumably so it would deteriorate to the level of Interstate right lanes and then they could rebuild the entire thing).  The fact is the fuel tax simply does not produce enough revenue to pay for all the needed highway work.  I drive on I-70 west of Denver, and having just had my car realigned, I can assure you the state is not properly maintaining its only major route through the Rocky Mountains.

As for subsidies, remember, the guy who never drives on an Interstate and who sticks to city streets and rural back roads is subsidizing those of us who do drive on the Interstates.  He pays the same gas tax we do and does not get federal reimbursement for his streets and roads to be maintained.

In transportation, everyone is subsidized to one degree or another, including inland and intracoastal barges.  The only one not subsidized is the Class 1 railroad that pays 100% for his right of way construction and maintenance plus property taxes for the privilege.  Even the short line and regional railroads can tap into federal maintenance and rehabilitation funds.  But not the major railroads that carry the vast majority of the freight our society counts on.

LK>"As for subsidies, remember, the guy who never drives on an Interstate and who sticks to city streets and rural back roads is subsidizing those of us who do drive on the Interstates.  He pays the same gas tax we do and does not get federal reimbursement for his streets and roads to be maintained."

    Right.  So, at the time that the Highway Trust fund was set up, the overwhelming number of gasoline and diesel buyers were just that: people who lived mostly in citirs and towns which did not benefit from the new construction, and which had, in many cases, spent consideable amounts of their own money on road and highway construction.  More importantly, the overwhelming majority of gasoline users were in the more developed states, yet the spending was far more uniform.  Massachusetts, New York, Illinois and Ohio, in effect, built "free" roads in New Mexico, Arizona, etc, on top of the local spending on road projects - often handled largely through tolls and quasi-public agencies.

anmccaff:  You're right in your discussion of the early days of the Interstate Highway System.  It was planned and intended to work that way.  I'm old enough to remember, for example, when Ohio was not spending nearly enough and through routes from Pennsylvania and Indiana virtually ended in farmers' corn fields at the state lines.  Those "free" roads in New Mexico and Arizona cost a lot less to build back then than did the Interstates in more populous states, so the cross-subsidy was not terribly bad.  (Try and get a four-lane, divided highway built for $1 million a mile, as some of the early IS roads were.)  Remember, the idea of the Interstate was to connect every population center of at least 50,000 souls.  

What our "friend" RAILWAYIST fails to recognize or acknowledge is that the U.S. needs all the transportation infrastructure it has and more.  This is not a war between Arab oil Sheikhs and us ordinary folks.  It's not even a war between trains and planes.  It is a war, if I may use that term, between Libertarians who would not spend money on anything and those of us who understand that transportation infrastructure is the skeleton tying together our rather large country and that permits commerce to be conducted in a reasonably efficient manner.

LK>"anmccaff:  You're right in your discussion of the early days of the Interstate Highway System.  It was planned and intended to work that way.  I'm old enough to remember, for example, when Ohio was not spending nearly enough and through routes from Pennsylvania and Indiana virtually ended in farmers' corn fields at the state lines.  Those "free" roads in New Mexico and Arizona cost a lot less to build back then than did the Interstates in more populous states, so the cross-subsidy was not terribly bad.  (Try and get a four-lane, divided highway built for $1 million a mile, as some of the early IS roads were.)  Remember, the idea of the Interstate was to connect every population center of at least 50,000 souls."

     This is one of the places I agree with Mike Willis.   I think the idea of having a freeway everyplace created, in the long term, more problems than it solved.

 You had one system that paid its own way right town to property taxes on the land and equipment, and had to get it's money from private, post-tax sources.  The other was tax-free, and got it's money pretax.  You shouldn't be surpised if one is cheaper than the other for shippers, even when the other is vastly more efficient.

LK>"What our "friend" RAILWAYIST fails to recognize or acknowledge is that the U.S. needs all the transportation infrastructure it has and more."

   perhaps, but it don't have to be balanced -or rather unbalanced- the way it is now.

LK>" This is not a war between Arab oil Sheikhs and us ordinary folks. "

    I don't think you have to be a raving xenophone to wonder if it's a good idea to be fully dependent on foreighn supplies of essentials.   That kind of thing begins warping your foreign policy, if nothing else.

   All that said, the solution when we realize we might have been stupid, or misinformed, or made a choice that made sense then, but no longer does, isn't making up a bunch of fairytales about how it happened, and picking somebody as the eeevvuulll villain, and playing pin-the-tail-on-the-Arab.

   The solution is to look at where we are, and where we want to be, and how to move that way.  The clues from reality suggest that blindly throwing money at it will take two fairly efficient systems, and make -both- of them worse.  Naaa gonna do that.  Wouldn't be prudent.

My sincere apologies for taking so long to reply, especially after Mr. Kaufman was so prompt.  In one sentence, I suppose it's called being a "family man"!

I'll begin by responding to Mr. Kaufman:

What is my motivation?  You've already answered that question yourself: I am an "asker of questions and seeker of truth"!  In all seriousness, railroading is my "thing" - both by vocation and avocation.  Besides, I've always agreed with the late John W. Barriger, who was of the opinion that railroading should be classified as an organised sport!

Now, for a few specifics:

LK: "What kind of profit is there other than 'financial'?"

GBL: Well, for starters, I think any valuable return can fairly be classified as "profit."  An example might be a "social profit."  Merriam-Webster certainly agrees.  Using the term profit to describe financial gain is only their second definition.  Even the Oxford Dictionary takes that approach, claiming the noun "profit" to be an "advantage or benefit."  Once again, the financial definition comes in second place.

LK: "I am unaware of any 'unbridled fear', as you put it, that railroads have no intrinsic value aside from generating a financial profit."

GBL: Perhaps my original wording was flawed.  What I meant to say was that our industry maintains a deep-seated fear ("unbridled" to me) that our blessed government or the general populace should ever consider them to be nothing more than a "Public Utility."  That's a justifiable fear, too...considering everything that has happened to our railroads over the past century, plus.  After all, what is (seemingly) the natural outcome if a company is presumed to provide a service which is too valuable to lose, even if it generates an insufficient return to support itself? Either force the private business to continue operating the service at a financial loss (which has been done) or requiring the taxpayers to pick up the tab (which has also been done!).

So, all fears aside, the question (even if it's academic) becomes: what value does a railroad (or, perhaps more precisely, railroad _technology_) possess apart from its ability to generate a return on investment?  With my natural inclination toward the passenger end of the equation, I think I may know part of the answer.  My hope is to eventually see all the players come to a working agreement!

Since we don't know each other, I'd like to say something in way of introduction.  Please pardon the digression!

One of my first positions (about 35 years ago) involved the handling of ad valorem tax issues.  It was a constant frustration, since the taxing authorities tended to view the railroads as a cash cow.  I was exposed to far more than a young and idealistic rookie should ever be expected to handle!  Many of my early experiences are indelibly seared upon my consciousness.

Now, I firmly believe that there is a place for passenger train services of all types in tomorrow's world.  The BNSF's Matt Rose seems to completely understand that possibility and what it might mean to his road.  Their corporate policy (in a nutshell) seems to be, in part, that any improvements to their property which are primarily of public benefit should be primarily paid for with public funds.  Fair enough!  He's not saying "no"; he's essentially saying "just come to the bargaining table with cash in hand."

Well, the CSX, when asked about passenger-related improvements along the former New York Central main line between Poughkeepsie and Rensselaer, did NOT immediately say "yes."  Instead, they responded with a couple of reasonable questions: what about the tax bill and who's expected to foot it? You see, with improved/expanded infrastructure, ad valorem taxes would naturally be expected to increase!

Presuming passenger train service, at least in this instance, responds to the public interest, convenience and necessity, who _should_ pay?  Naturally, I think it'd be the same folks who were paying for the corridor improvements to begin with!  At the very least, one government agency should make a deal with another in order to remove the fear of an undue tax burden on CSX.

Does that always happen?  What if the public decides that the railroads should be glad to take their money...along with all the red tape and legal claptrap associated with accepting those funds?  What if a court ruled that a certain railway line indeed possessed an "intrinsic value" to society and that the road should be forced to play ball - even if it ultimately meant no financial return, just indemnification for its time, trouble and the use of its property?

Still, since I am firmly convinced that our technology DOES retain a value far above its ability to reap profits, that leads to statements such as the one I made in my original post.  After all, private, tax paying, employee supporting, dividend awarding, service rendering organisations such as the Texas Electric Railway interurban line were allowed to discontinue operations and abandon rights-of-way because the company found it impossble to compete against the fellows who print the money, yet we taxpayers are being asked to support restoration of a segment of those original routes because we've finally come to understand their role in society!

You said, "The current Amtrak was the politically doable solution, even though direct subsidies to railroads for operating passenger service would have been more sensible and effective."  I absolutely agree, in every way.  Therefore, in the case of what is now generally known as "rail transit," who could say what the outcome might have been if the powers-that-be had gone to the Texas Electric's board and offered a subsidy in exchange for continued service?  Politically untenable, especially in the context of Post-War history?  Sure...but, it does make me wonder.  It also causes me to consider the various possibilities for ultimate solutions to continent-wide transportation needs, where both private companies and the traveling/shipping public could win.

Where WERE we?!

[Give me an open forum...]

LK: "...taxpayers are spending virtually nothing on freight rail service, although they are paying billions to improve the highway system that rail competitors use..."

GBL: Yes, sir; I'm with you, 100%...which is why I mentioned absolutely nothing about freight service in my original post.  Just so you'll know, I basically subscribe to the A.A.R.'s 1950s-era propaganda: the Class Is are doing everything they're doing - profitably, after taxes - whilst attempting to compete against all those sucking at Washington's teat.

As it were.

LK: "Rail passenger service never has made money."

LK: "For many years [passenger train service] was provided by railroad companies that cross-subsidized it with profit from their freight operations."

GBL: I want to say a few words about these statements, too; but, they'll have to wait until after lunch and an early afternoon meeting.

Thanks for listening so far.

I'd also like to respond to some things that anmccaff said.  I guess that'll need to wait, too!

Garl

GBL>"You said, "The current Amtrak was the politically doable solution, even though direct subsidies to railroads for operating passenger service would have been more sensible and effective."  I absolutely agree, in every way.  Therefore, in the case of what is now generally known as "rail transit," who could say what the outcome might have been if the powers-that-be had gone to the Texas Electric's board and offered a subsidy in exchange for continued service?  Politically untenable, especially in the context of Post-War history?  Sure...but, it does make me wonder.  It also causes me to consider the various possibilities for ultimate solutions to continent-wide transportation needs, where both private companies and the traveling/shipping public could win."

   I think for many of us the whole subsidy route is clouded by knowing what the effect of recent examples have been.

  Passenger rail, when private, ranged from occasionally wildly profitable: often somewhat profitable, making enough to cover its expenses, but making it hard to raise cash; marginal to slightly unprofitable, or a steady, but surprisingly slow drain of cash.  Even when companies were forced to carry dogs on their books (anyone remember the CNW's train to Rochelle?), they were often quite creative in stanching the bleeding.  This was in an environment, BTW, where the rails had many of the disadvanteges of central planning - fixed fares, etc, with none of the opportunities that could have given.

   Look at the way prices have diverged in the days since freight has gotten more private and passenger less.  Just look at the relative inflation of equipment.

   This isn't just rail, btw, when the feds decided to support bus transit with grants for equipment, the total cost for many systems simply moved up to absorb it.

   (There's a great "unintended consequences" story in there.  When the federal government finally decided that giving away buses every two years wasn't too bright, it mot only put the squeeze of churches and other non-profits, who'd viewed the nearly-new discards about the way cabbies do cop cars -cheap and serviceable, but it finished off some boat engine "marinizers."  No more free 6-71s.)

Mr. Latham:  Let's start with my apology for questioning your motives in posting the questions you did.  You are entitled to any reason you wish or even no reason, and it isn't for me to question your bona fides.  I was fortunate enough to have known JWB rather well.  To him, railroading was organized sport.

As for profits, financial or otherwise, I find it much easier to define profits in dollars - or pounds, euros, yen, shekels or whatever.  I have no comment on the dictionaries you cite, good books all.  I must add that I don't care for the term "social profit," as it too easily can be a rationale for ventures to consume capital more than they create wealth.

Unbridled fear and intrinsic value: We'll just have to agree that we have a semantic difference.  We can agree that there are forces in the society that do consider railroads to be public utilities.  My field is freight, and I find it offensive that the electric coops that are most active in trying to bring railroads back under regulation are themselves exempt from most antitrust law, have access to federal capital through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, pay no taxes on their earnings as long as they distribute those earnings to their coop members (who do get to pay taxes), and are exempt from state public utility commission regulation, which exemption the Edison (investor-owned) utilities do not enjoy.  I believe the appropriate word for the coops and the CURE lobbying group is hypocrtical.

Government can force a railroad to provide a service at a loss only so long.  When the checks bounce, they will come to a halt.  We've seen it happen.  The taxpayers are most unreliable source of capital.  Members of Congress can be counted upon to find something more to their liking on which lavish taxpayer dollars.  In 1974, there were members of Congress who openly advocated nationalization of the railroads.  Wiser heads prevailed.

You may have an "inclination" toward passenger service, but I would point to Amtrak as the product of misthinking and nonthinking on the part of several Administrations and the Congress.  I'm not nearly as optimistic as you seem to be about getting all the players together.  As passenger service does not support itself (capital and operations) anywhere in the world, it always requires some degree of public involvement/investment.  I just don't see the Congress ever collectively deciding that's a good way to spend taxpayer money.  I may agree with you that passenger service has a place and should be supported, but I'm not the king of the universe.

BNSF's Matt Rose is an articulate proponent of the public-private-partnership concept.  In fairness, the CEOs of the other Class 1 roads also are.  The fact is public investment on behalf of passenger service will benefit freight rail too.  UP, for example, which has reputation for not playing nicely with government, has an office for passenger service/relations and participates, particularly in California, with public agencies in addition to Amtrak.  You might suggest to CSX that it include the increased taxes NY will extract from it in the fee the public agencies will pay for their use of its property for passenger service.

You asked: What if a court ruled that a certain railway line indeed possessed an "intrinsic value" to society and that the road should be forced to play ball - even if it ultimately meant no financial return, just indemnification for its time, trouble and the use of its property?

That's pretty much the position in which the freight railroads are today relative to Amtrak use of their property.  It's been done before, and the public, through its government, has proven to be a most unreliable participant.

[Give me an open forum...]

LK: "...taxpayers are spending virtually nothing on freight rail service, although they are paying billions to improve the highway system that rail competitors use..."

As for the 1950s era propaganda, do not forget that the railroads were under the ICC's heavy regulatory thumb and had no choice but to cross-subsidize their passenger service with the earnings from their freight operations.

Mr. Kaufman:

I most certainly appreciate your kind apology. Please believe me when I assure you that none is necessary! I was far too relaxed when making my initial post, especially since I was new to the list and unsure of its protocol. I don't blame anyone for thinking, "who IS this guy?!"

Now, let's see...where were we?

Maybe I'll should give you a general idea of my mindset.

Of all the "mental types" anmccaff mentioned, I may be, perhaps, one of the most dangerous: a cross between the "True Believer" and the "Air-headed Visionary"! [I LOVED that list, by the way!]

I think the single biggest NEED we have in the domestic freight and passenger transport world today is a comprehensive national transportation/energy/environmental policy. [It will take all three working together, too. No part of the equation can effectively stand alone.]

I think one of the single biggest ISSUES we face is the _state_ of our existing domestic freight and passenger transport system! Anmccaff referred to this when he said, "The solution is to look at where we are, and where we want to be, and how to move that way. The clues from reality suggest that blindly throwing money at it will take two fairly efficient systems, and make -both- of them worse."

I believe, simply put, that we are 'smack-dab' in the midst of an untenable situation, which is a direct result of our auto-centric approach to domestic transportation. We need to move toward a culture which, at the very least, accepts railway technology as an equal player with those of the highways and skyways.

And, if that means "Passenger Trains on Freight Railroads" [tm], so be it! As long as the public never loses sight of who actually OWNS the property, we should be fine.

Now, back to your earlier statements:

LK: "Rail passenger service never has made money."

GBL: Well, at least for argument's sake, I'll agree. In fact, that statement should really be expanded to include ALL forms of passenger transportation! For example, even with all of the direct and indirect forms of subsidy commercial airlines receive (airfield construction and maintenance, the air traffic control system, our [cough] "Essential Air Services Act" and so on), they have a real hard time making a go of it. Warren Buffett has shown that, if taken either from day one or from the end of World War II through today's date, our domestic commercial airline industry has lost far more money than it has ever made!

Maybe that's one of the reasons why he invests his transportation dollars in the manner he does!

Anyway, to find a day when U.S. passenger trains WERE universally expected to "make money" requires us to go so far back in history (arguably, even all the way back to the Gay Nineties) as to make any attempt at debate seem fairly ridiculous.

Of course, my wife contends that I'm nothing if not ridiculous!

What George W. Hilton pretty conclusively proved over two score years ago was that the relative decline in railroad passenger profit began in the mid-1890s when our early interurban network began to siphon off local trade. [We _are_ discussing "steam roads" here, so local traction - even rail-based - doesn't really "count."] Later, an absolute decline in passenger volume (both in sheer number and revenue passenger miles) began in 1921 - although, according to the I.C.C. formula, passenger traffic remained a "profitable" enterprise until the Great Depression started.

From then on, apart from the War years, it has remained mired in red ink.

One thing that always hurt the railroads when attempting to eek out a modest profit in passenger service was the accepted level of competition between companies. For example, how often have we been told that a given road "expected" to lose money on its dining car service? [Early on, some railroads actively fought the very idea of dining car operations for that reason: its inherent unprofitablility.]

It has also been estimated that the maintenance bill and taxes paid on New York's Grand Central Terminal during the Roaring Twenties _equaled_ the TOTAL PASSENGER RECEIPTS during the same period for ALL New York City traffic of the NYC and the New Haven, COMBINED! You just can't make money that way! [What if G.C.T. had been treated the same way as today's public airfields? Hmmm...]

LK: "For many years [passenger train service] was provided by railroad companies that cross-subsidized it with profit from their freight operations."

GBL: Fair enough, and certainly technically true, although I'd dare say that many companies didn't begin to see things precisely that way until well after the War. More accurate may be the idea that, considering the railroad's obligations to the general public (sound familiar?!), every portion of their business needn't have been a positive revenue generator, as long as the body as a whole was sound. The ultimate problem with that approach is pretty obvious in hindsight. You've already touched upon it: "As freight profits shrank as a result of public policies (effective subsidization of trucking, regulation), [the railroad industry] no longer could engage in the passenger business."

Of course, many other divisions of our business eventually suffered the same fate, including livestock operations, the L.C.L. trade, and so on.

I've often wondered what might have happened if deregulation had occurred _before_ the coming of Amtrak!

Also worthy of note is one of W. Graham Claytor, Jr.'s primary reasonings (rationalisations?!) for refusing to sign the original Amtrak contract. He figured the amount of positive publicity and goodwill the Southern received through its passenger operations every year was approximately equal to the total losses generated by those same trains.

Yes, when attempting to view history through the eyes of industry executives of 40 or 60 or 80 years ago, it's truly difficult to overestimate the value they placed upon their three primary excuses for sustaining "money-losing" passenger operations. After all, those trains were:

1. A source of professional pride and an integral part of what defined us as an industry. As the Burlington Route's Harry C. Murphy once said, "Take away the passenger train, and a railroad is nothing more than a truck company." Pretty strong stuff!

2. An advertisement for what we did and stood for (as was Mr. Claytor's view) and "the window through which we [were] viewed," per GN's John M. Budd (his so-called "Clean Window Policy"). Passenger trains were designed and maintained to "reflect credit" upon their operating roads, in the opinion of Santa Fe's John S. Reed. A basic part of this "advertising" argument was that the railroad's shippers rode passenger trains, too - and those riders would (presumably) judge the road's ability to move their freight efficiently by the way they enjoyed their most recent journey. [By the early '60s, that particular argument was rapidly imploding.]

3. Part of the railroad industry's basic _obligation_ to the citizens it served (the ol' "public utility" routine). [No offence intended, but that's the hardest of all for me to envision in modern terms!]

More, later.

Garl

Mr. Latham:  You have provifed far more food for thought than I suspect most others here would care to read.  So, I shall respond selectively where I think I have something to contribute.

Graham Claytor did decline to commit the SOU to joining Amtrak, as did the Rio Grande and the Rock Island, the latter because it was so close to financial collapse that it coudln't afford the admission price of two year's worth of passenger service losses.  Southern was justly proud of its Crescent, but only until the equipment needed replacement and at that point, SOU did join Amtrak because it couldn't justify the capital cost of the train sets to its stockholders.

There are almost as many myths as there are truths out there about regulation, the railroads' relations to it.  In my research I have found that most of the outstanding railroad executives saw and understood the evils of economic regulation well before the Great Depression.  It just didn't do them any good, but they knew.

It is easy to talk of a railroad's basic obligation to society, particularly when those doing the talking don't have to meet the payroll.  The ICC approach to rail regulation, patterned on public utility regulation, allowed railroads a maximum rate of return on assets.  This encouraged railroads to maintain more assets than the business could support, which only contributed to the ultimate collapse.  What would have happend if deregulation had come before Amtrak?  It wouldn't have happened.  It took the collapse of passenger service, the entry into bankruptcy proceedings of railroads operating 25% of U.S. track miles to scare the Hell out of Congress.  Absent that fear of being tagged with the need and cost of nationalizing the railroads, Congress would have done what it's best at doing - absolutely nothing.

Everything said about subsidies for competing modes is correct, but no one yet has figured out how to turn the clock or calendar back.  I much prefer to living in the world as it is than trying to live in a fantasy world.  If you go back far enough in history, you'll find that throughout history speed has prevailed.  Horses beat walking; steam locomotives beat horse-drawn vehicles, airplanes beat trains.  This is particularly so in the U.S., which is big and population isn't terribly dense.  My point is that the railroads would have eliminated many secondary passenger trains much sooner if they had been permitted to do so by the government (why do I keept thinking "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you?).  That might have allowed them to continue operation of fewer but prime trains without doing the companies the fiscal damage that was done to them.  Yes, trucks are subsidized, but we're not going to undo that decision.  No, it's time for those who love railroads and railroading to focus on living in the real world and making the best of the opportunities they have.  It may be fun to focus on yesteryear, but it's not very productive.

Well, this specific 'blog' title now been dropped from the "Daily Rail News" e-mail list, so I suppose I'd better finish up before it all drifts off into the ether!

++++++

anmccaff: "Then it cycles again."

GBL: Have you ever visited YouTube? Here's a short blurb you might enjoy, which touches upon that idea:

www.youtube.com/watch

I have no idea if that U.R.L. will wrap properly or not. Anyway, if you can find it, it's definitely worth a watch. If the link does NOT work, simply search for "mememolly" and "the internet."

++++++

A: "Since some people's ideas on What America Needs in Passenger Rail depends on a liberal application of fertilizer, this creates natural conflicts."

G: Perhaps; but, at least some of those ideas are being generated by people who're honestly attempting "to look at where [they] are, and where [they] want to be, and how to move that way." Anyway, based upon your statement, I'm presuming you have an opinion (at least in general terms) of "What America Needs in Passenger Rail"...even if it's nothing. If it _is_ literally "nothing" (or anywhere close to it), then I'm afraid our viewpoints are diametrically opposed.

++++++

A: [Re: electrification] "As for 'technological advancement' what's so 'advanced' about using a technology in places where it is financially, ecologically, and esthetically unsound?"

G: Financially? I suppose, if we're discussing what a private company might do on its own, then (in simplistic terms) we'd need to get to a point where the design, installation, operation, maintenance and tax burden on an Overhead Catenary System would be less costly than maintaining the status quo. They'd be some growing pains, to be sure...but nothing our railroads didn't experience when moving from steam to diesel-electric power.

Ecologically? You'll have to help me with that one. Presumably, [ahem] "green" sources of power (hydro, thermo, wind, solar, etc.) supplying electricity to a railway traction system would be far more ecologically sound than sending mobile power plants along as part of every consist.

Aesthetically? All in the eye of the beholder, I guess. I'd certainly rather have catenary lines I can see than have _air_ I can see! You know, the city of Dallas used a similar specious argument years ago when (successfully) attempting to eliminate trolley-bus lines from downtown (shortly after all those bad ol' streetcar services were abandoned): "We need to get rid of the ugly wires!" During my tenure at DART, I had to deal with the same sort of thing every time neighbourhood groups assaulted me over those "unsightly power lines" which would (naturally) negatively impact their property values (it was ALWAYS their "property values").

++++++

A: "There's a name for that kind of argument, you know, and it isn't a respectable one. Wanna restate it in neutral terms?"

G: Nah. The way I asked my question may not have been neutral ("have you stopped beating your wife?"), but it got the point across. Besides, I think we've already discussed "unbridled fear" and "misguided belief."

++++++

G: "I find that fascinating, since we taxpayers are now busy spending fairly large sums of money (although minuscule in relative terms) attempting to replicate a small portion of the streetcar/interurban/regional/intercity passenger railway services we once enjoyed - operations which were originally abandoned primarily because they didn't make money!"

A: "Three things wrong there. First, the numbers are only small because the systems are, relatively. Compared to any other means of moving things or people, the costs are enormous for many systems, and getting worse rather than better over time. Signing on to that isn't getting on the bandwagon, it's fighting your way through the rats to get on the sinking ship."

G: Want to restate that in neutral terms?! Seriously, I detect just a wee bit of negativism toward the establishment of modern rail-based passenger systems! Are the costs really more enormous than the costs of doing nothing or, worse yet, continuing to actively underwrite our auto-centric culture? I'd be interested in knowing the way you'd like to proceed, especially if we could use the same approach you mentioned before: "to look at where we are, and where we want to be, and how to move that way."

A: "Next, you gotta tell Railroadist this 'economics' thing. He thinks it was all woo-woo conspiracies."

G: Well, that was _part_ of it (as you clearly outlined in your next point). No need to worry, though. I was born and reared in Dallas, Texas. Ever since J.F.K.'s assassination, I've become fairly immune to conspiracy theories!

A: "Finally, although economic factors obviously played a big part in removing rail, so did political ones, and local and federal governments did a lot to kill the transit and interurban systems. For a long time - nearly 50 years- trains were the official evil plutocratic monopoly for your average demagogue, and the Right didn't help either."

G: So, I guess the question might be ARE WE GOING TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT?! Of course, as I've already admitted, I'm just a combination "True Believer" and "Air-headed Visionary"! That alone causes more than its share of problems...

++++++

A: "Fantasizers, bullshitters. Astroturfers. True Believers. Engineers, and engineers, and engineers: operators, mechanicals, civils. Moss-backed fogeys. Air-headed visionaries. Rent-seekers. Ayn-Rand-would-be-God-if-there-were-one Liberhoovians. Management. Union men. Goons of Management and Union Thugs. Salesmen for transit, who stand, win, lose, or draw, to make a hell of a lot of money whether they do. All in one tiny, little, itsy-bitsy blog site."

G: As I've already said, I LOVE this list! It reminds me of Mel Brook's "Blazing Saddles"! All you needed to do was to end it all with the phrase "...and Methodists!"

Best,

Garl

LK: "Graham Claytor did decline to commit the SOU to joining Amtrak..., but only until the equipment needed replacement and at that point, SOU did join Amtrak because it couldn't justify the capital cost of the train sets to its stockholders."

GL: I've heard this sort of thing for, well, I suppose the past 38 1/2 years! It's partially true, although I wonder why (in this case) it took the Southern 8 years longer than its brethren to realise that might be a problem! [How common was our industry's assumption that conventional intercity passenger train services would have completely disappeared within a few years of Amtrak's birth?] I'd also point out that John Reed said (in January of '88) that, for the Santa Fe, it wasn't capital costs or operational losses or anything of the sort which became their primary reason for signing the Amtrak contract. It was the fact that, as our United States ever increasingly evolved (DEvolved?!) into an overly-litigious society, just ONE horrific derailment could have inflicted MAJOR financial damage!

The Southern's exit from the passenger trade had as much to do with Graham Calytor's departure and Stanley Crane's arrival as anything else.

LK: "It is easy to talk of a railroad's basic obligation to society, particularly when those doing the talking don't have to meet the payroll."

GL: That's why it's so important to rehearse these things. After all, the folks most likely to trot out cliches like a "railroad's basic obligation to society" ARE the ones who "don't have to meet the payroll"!

LK: "If you go back far enough in history, you'll find that throughout history speed has prevailed. Horses beat walking; steam locomotives beat horse-drawn vehicles, airplanes beat trains. This is particularly so in the U.S., which is big and population isn't terribly dense."

GL: Of course, the primary form of transportation in this part of the world is the private automobile. In fact, it's so universally true that, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, one is more likely to drive from Dallas to New York City or Dallas to Los Angeles than take a jet airplane between those same two points! So much for speed.

LK: "...it's time for those who love railroads and railroading to focus on living in the real world and making the best of the opportunities they have."

GL: My eyes are fixed straight ahead. Please don't confuse an understanding of and appreciation for history with a desire to replicate what once was.

I can "foam" with the best of 'em...but I'm not THAT bad!

Take care,

Garl

LK: "Graham Claytor did decline to commit the SOU to joining Amtrak..., but only until the equipment needed replacement and at that point, SOU did join Amtrak because it couldn't justify the capital cost of the train sets to its stockholders."

GL: I've heard this sort of thing for, well, I suppose the past 38 1/2 years! It's partially true, although I wonder why (in this case) it took the Southern 8 years longer than its brethren to realise that might be a problem!

   No, he explicitly covered that point.  As long as it was operating costs, with the sunk costs of the equipment...well, -sunk-, it was possible to support.  When it meant getting big chunks of new money, that was something different.  I dunno what was going on in their heads (although LK might), they might have been hoping that Amtrak revitalized connecting service to make it more viable, they may have thought a chance to rationalize the routes would succeed, they might have hoped the feds would fix some of the problems (many they themselves had caused, if you think about it) when it was solidly under their control, or they may have just viewed it as an unpleasnt thing to have to do, that they would put off as long as they reasonably could.

   Frankly, I think the answer was all of the above, with the main reasons switching over time from hope to resignation, but there are others here who'd know more about it.

Garl:  In the interest of length control and time, I'm going to respond to you in text form rather than in matching quotes.  This thread is getting long enough that it is difficult to follow all of the who saids and who respondeds.

As for SOU's reason for eventuallyjoining Amtrak, we're probably both right.  I was in Washington in those days, as was SOU, and I know the capital cost of multiple trainsets for the Crescent was more than the company believed justifiable.  Also, as you say, the big difference was Claytor had moved on to the Defense Department and Crane was running the show.  Why did it take the Southern so long to realize this might be a problem?  I don't think it took Southern any time at all.  Remember, as recently as 1971, loads were good and the avoidable losses were quite minor for the profitable Southern.  I suspect its management - a very good one, by the way - knew the capital issue was lurking in the future.  They were able to deal with it when it needed to be dealt with.  As for the assumption that intercity passenger service would disappear with a few years, that was so.  Initially, the ICC ordered various railroads to continue some trains even where passenger revenue did not equal crew wages, but it finally (Transportation Act of 1958?) adopted a policy of allowing train-offs in the most egregious cases.  These tended to be milk trains and the like, with the great name trains the various railroads were proud of continuing to be operated as long as possible.  Mr. Reed, whom I also had the privilege of knowing, I'm sure said that.  He was a fine exective.  He also had a railroad that was engineered for trains like the Super Chief to transit Chicago-Los Angeles in about 39 hours.  It was Mr. Reed who refused to allow Amtrak to use the Super Chief name, saying that the interior colors of the Amtrak equipment looked like a French bordello.  As for the cost of litigation, undoubtedly so.  The railroads had so much trouble getting catastrophic insurance coverage that they created their own captive company in Bermuda.

You and I appear to agree on the semantics of "obligations to society" and the charlatans who would abrogate private property rights in search of obligations to society.

As for speed trumping in transportation, I'll stand by my earlier statement but will amend it.  As few pleasure trips were taken when steam locomotives proved to be faster than horses, I'll qualify it as people who had to travel - and they did opt for trains.  More to the point, I suspect most Texan businesspeople fly to New York or Los Angeles than drive, and among those who drive, getting a family of four into the flivver is sufficiently less costly than air fare for four that the auto is the economical method for pleasure travel.  Actually, I don't believe that either, as the cost of motels, meals, wear and tear on the driver, etc., long ago drove me and millions of other Americans to travel by air, the combination of speed and overall comfort trumping the family flivver.

It's fine to know and respect history and the lessons to be learned from it.  My comments about focusing on living in the real world really were aimed at RAILWAYIST, who doesn't seem to know the real world from the fantasy world he think he lives in.

Linguistically, "foamer" comes from foaming at the mouth over trains.  It is a pejorative, so I try not to use it.  "Fan" is akin to fanatic and also tends to be pejorative.  Personally, I prefer "rail enthusiast," as it doesn't insult the enthusiast.

Take care,

lk

anmccaff on Southern's decision to retain its Crescent rather than join Amtrak at its initiation:    Frankly, I think the answer was all of the above, with the main reasons switching over time from hope to resignation, but there are others here who'd know more about it.

And frankly, I think anmccaff has it spot-on, as they say in the UK.  Let's remember, the men (and they were all men back then) who ran America's railroads loved trains. Keep that in mind and you'll more easily understand some of the things they did and decisions they made.

AM>>: [Re: electrification] "As for 'technological advancement' what's so 'advanced' about using a technology in places where it is financially, ecologically, and esthetically unsound?"

GL>: "Financially? I suppose, if we're discussing what a private company might do on its own, then (in simplistic terms) we'd need to get to a point where the design, installation, operation, maintenance and tax burden on an Overhead Catenary System would be less costly than maintaining the status quo. They'd be some growing pains, to be sure...but nothing our railroads didn't experience when moving from steam to diesel-electric power."

   Yeah, it actually would be, because for a lightly used line, continuous electric power costs way, way, more than diesel.  That's what did in the old electrics, if you come to think of it - steam (or truck) could expand into marginal areas cheaply, and they couldn't.

Well, one of the things that did 'em in, anyway.

GL>"Ecologically? You'll have to help me with that one. Presumably, [ahem] "green" sources of power (hydro, thermo, wind, solar, etc.) supplying electricity to a railway traction system would be far more ecologically sound than sending mobile power plants along as part of every consist.

   Yes, but if you take the word "every" out, it flips.  Electric systems lose power regardless of use.  I'm trying to get a small...I dunno.  Too big to call a spur, but not a branch, either.  Spranch line?

Anyway, if I manage to con ...convince, that is... some of the PTB that this is worth doing in the short run, it might be operating a very small number of very big trains a few times a year, and almost nothing the rest of the time, at least for the first few years.   The ecological damage of mining the copper would surely outweigh any advantages from sparing a tankload or two of diesel.

GL"Aesthetically? All in the eye of the beholder, I guess. I'd certainly rather have catenary lines I can see than have _air_ I can see! You know, the city of Dallas used a similar specious argument years ago when (successfully) attempting to eliminate trolley-bus lines from downtown (shortly after all those bad ol' streetcar services were abandoned): "We need to get rid of the ugly wires!" During my tenure at DART, I had to deal with the same sort of thing every time neighbourhood groups assaulted me over those "unsightly power lines" which would (naturally) negatively impact their property values (it was ALWAYS their "property values")"

   But the wires are often ugly to a great many people, and the fact that you don't see that, or I don't see it all the time, doesn't change that.   We've got at least 3 companies looking at ways of hiding this or storing the power for gaps, in the long term, this has tremendous potential.

AM:  "Yes, but if you take the word 'every' out, it flips."

GBL:  You betcha.  I went back to check my original post and I _did_ say "near universal," with no caveat regarding traffic density or anything else...which was certainly an error on my part.

AM:  "...the [O.C.S.] wires are often ugly to a great many people, and the fact that you don't see that, or I don't see it all the time, doesn't change that."

GBL:  Fair enough.  The sad thing, to me?  To be completely honest, I do NOT see it!  I freely accept the fact other people may have different opinions - and retain the right to maintain those opinions - but I just don't get it.

I've even been told (in all seriousness) that railroad _track_ structure is "ugly."  It was a homeowner who lived along an existing corridor (and now wanted the bad ol' trains to go away...you know the routine).  He was complaining about clean, fresh granite ballast, concrete crossties, Pandrol 'e'-clips, 112 lb. C.W.R. - NICE lookin' stuff, all put together, aligned and tamped.  To him, it was "UGLY"!

No accounting for taste, eh?!

Garl

LK:  "It was Mr. Reed who refused to allow Amtrak to use the Super Chief name, saying that the interior colors of the Amtrak equipment looked like a French bordello."

GBL:  I remember the story quite well.  The way I heard it, Mrs. Reed later asked her husband how in the world he would know what the inside of a French bordello looked like!

Several years ago, I wrote a piece entitled "Who Killed the Super Chief?"  After its original posting on the All_Aboard list serve, it was added to the Arizona Rail Passenger Association web site.  There are now links from several other locations, including Wikipedia.

If any of you are interested and ever have the opportunity, the article can be accessed via the following U.R.L.:

archive.azrail.org/.../gl_chief.htm

Garl

Garl:  No, no accounting for taste - or the lack of it.  I'd wager a bit that the "ugly" track was there before the guy and his house were, too.

Someone please call a psychiatrist.  We have a serious mental illness here.

Larry:

Railwayist is merely a spoof.  Anyone seriously talking about the Pullman Company and High Speed Rail in one breath is not serious.

Now I have to take you to task for your statement, straight out of the ATA playbook, that adding a sixth axle to an 80,000 lb trailer would increase its gross weight to 97,000 lbs and do less damage.

Why not do the math?  It actually increases the gross weight per axle.  If you want a reasonable solution to the truck damage where four wheelers pay for it, why not add the axle and keep the weight at 80,000 lbs?

ANNCCAFF:

Electric Traction was indeed subsidized up until the passage of the (circa) 1938 Utility Company Holding Act.  You see, many traction companies were owned by the electrical generating utility, who sold their subsidiary bulk electricity (and made a profit).  Any loss from their wholly owned subsidiary was deducted from their income tax.  The Holding company act would divorece traction from their parent companies and without this protection, they died like flies.

"  Passenger rail, when private, ranged from occasionally wildly profitable: often somewhat profitable, making enough to cover its expenses, but making it hard to raise cash; marginal to slightly unprofitable, or a steady, but surprisingly slow drain of cash."

To me, this appears to be revisionist history.  Most long-distance trains were losing over a million dollars per train per year.  When did the railroads read the handwriting on the wall?  Look at the last long distance passenger car orders by private railroads.

It was a horribly rapid drain of resources.  The shorter the distance the less it lost, except for podunk branch lines.

Guy: I beg to differ. My statement comes not from any ATA playbook, but from the old Staff Studies Department of the AAR, back when we were trying to roll back the 80,000 lb. GVW limit.  Remember it isn't just tonnage per axle, but there is something called the bridge formula that purports to tell us how much damage a truck does to the road and bridge surfaces.  

More important to a discussion of truck size and weight, remember that shippers want the most freight moved at the least expense.  They don't really worry about public policy down in Bentonville.  They do believe that if J.B. Hunt could load an additional eight tons in each trailer, they would get lower prices and live happily ever after.

Finally, as for RAILWAYIST, I wish I could think of him as a spoof.  I cannot.  He has posted too many of these mindless proposals.  The man/woman/it may be an economic illiterate; he's never used the word nor given any evidence that he understands anything about economics.  

When talking of the demise of the privately operated passenger rail system, it might be helpful to remember that nothing was caused by a single element.  Many name trains continued in service because the U.S. Post Office provided sufficient revenue to justify continued operation.  When the Post Office Department (it's name back then) decided to switch to trucks and terminated the Railway Post Office operation, the flood of train-off petitions at the ICC was almost instantaneous.  Some trains were kept in service because they made some contribution to system fixed costs and showed positive cash flow.  Even those trains died when the operator faced the cost of replacing multiple train sets.  The Southern Crescent is a fine example of that.  And, face it, most railroad executives, particulary those who sneered at "foamers," were closet rail fans themselves.  They wanted to believe they could "do it" better than their counterparts on other roads.  Don't forget the effort to develop light-weight passenger equipment that could be operated less expensively.  The railroads tried to maintain their passenger service until well afer WW II.  They also were required to do so by the ICC.  The real move to get out of the passenger business came when truck competition cut into the operating income from freight that had cross-subsidized passenger service.  I don't think this is revisionist thinking at all.

GS>"Electric Traction was indeed subsidized up until the passage of the (circa) 1938 Utility Company Holding Act.  You see, many traction companies were owned by the electrical generating utility, who sold their subsidiary bulk electricity (and made a profit).  Any loss from their wholly owned subsidiary was deducted from their income tax.  The Holding company act would divorece traction from their parent companies and without this protection, they died like flies."

  Equally, and perhaps more importantly, the utilities were constrained from taking market-rate profits.  They were limited to a capped ROI.  If there were dollars in there wanting to get out, the only way to do it was to increase the I(nvestment) to get the R(eturn).

The role this played in subsequent industry support for rural electrification isn't widely understood, but it was there.

  Also, load prediction is an important part of capacity planning, owning a major consumers helped both in that regard.

AM>"Passenger rail, when private, ranged from occasionally wildly profitable: often somewhat profitable, making enough to cover its expenses, but making it hard to raise cash; marginal to slightly unprofitable, or a steady, but surprisingly slow drain of cash."

GS>To me, this appears to be revisionist history.  Most long-distance trains were losing over a million dollars per train per year.  When did the railroads read the handwriting on the wall?  Look at the last long distance passenger car orders by private railroads.

  Yes.  The "slow drain" I was referring to was mid-range and commuter.

GS>"It was a horribly rapid drain of resources.  The shorter the distance the less it lost, except for podunk branch lines."

  I'd bet we are talking about the same numbers.  If the post-WWII passenger fares hadn't been capped during a time of inflation, and hadn't been matched by loss of freight revenue, much of the North East could have limped along a great deal longer.

  (I think, personally, that requirements to duplicate services (caused by anti-trust laws, not market needs) was a bigger factor than the obvious one of fixed income in a time when wages were going through the roof.)

  All that said, I'm not disagreeing with you that the loss numbers were horrendous for most, maybe all, long-haul roads from WWII on.

That last sentence should have been:

"Also, load prediction is an important part of capacity planning, owning a major -consumer- helped both in that regard."

GL Wrote (Quoting LK):

LK: "Graham Claytor did decline to commit the SOU to joining Amtrak..., but only until the equipment needed replacement and at that point, SOU did join Amtrak because it couldn't justify the capital cost of the train sets to its stockholders."

Not complete. Southern stayed out of Amtrak until it was assured that Amtrak had equipment and the skills to operate the service fairly decently.  Its reputation was tied inevitably to the consolidated Southerner and Crescent Limited.  Equipment was indeed an issue, but not the entire story.

GL:  "The Southern's exit from the passenger trade had as much to do with Graham Calytor's departure and Stanley Crane's arrival as anything else."

More revisionism.  I interviewed Mr. Claytor on the last run of the Crescent (Northbound), where due to the shortage of lounge space, after dinner, the diner became a lounge with impromptu guitar music.  The discontinuance of the Southern Crescent had nothing to do with his impending retirement and everything to do with aging equipment, open public railway stations, baggage handlers, passenger ticket agents, persistent operating loss (despite advertising the service) and most particularly, AMTRAK's growing respectability in operating passenger services.  More importantly, it was felt that AMTRAK could operate the service without giving Southern a black eye in the PR face it turned towards its shipping world.

A net loss could be turned into a profit center and there was a market for Southern's obsolete passenger locomotives and car fleet.

LK (said): "Guy: I beg to differ. My statement comes not from any ATA playbook, but from the old Staff Studies Department of the AAR, back when we were trying to roll back the 80,000 lb. GVW limit.  Remember it isn't just tonnage per axle, but there is something called the bridge formula that purports to tell us how much damage a truck does to the road and bridge surfaces. "

That begs the question that adding an axle and increasing the GVW to 97,000 INCREASES the total GVW per axle.  This is not helping our highway infrastructure, though it will help shippers whose products gross out before the max out in volume.

LK said:  "When the Post Office Department (it's name back then) decided to switch to trucks and terminated the Railway Post Office operation, the flood of train-off petitions at the ICC was almost instantaneous."

All true, but it was the storage mail contracts, basically, box cars with tight-lock couplers and high speed trucks, that provided the bulk of the revenue.  And what killed this little revenue generator was the ZIP Code.  

That may seem like an over-reaching statement but it's true.  With the advent of the Zip Code, the USPO built suburban mail sorting centers off the railway lines and away from the large downtown sorting centers.  Local mail went to the suburbs, got sorted and returned to town.  Others got trucked to closer destinations and still others were flown out.

Closing downtown sorting centers meant the end of storage mail by rail.  Indeed, the loss of storage mail caused the escalation of passenger train losses and in turn, many train-off petitions.

Thanks, Guy, for some very interesting elaboration.  Net-net, I think this discussion proves rather convincingly that there was no single incident that killed off private operation of passenger rail service, but a series of unrelated, unplanned actions and events that combined to do in the passenger trains.  Too many people only seem to be satisfied if they have a single element that they consider the "cause."  I suspect some of these are the same people who don't believe the U.S. ever went to the moon (we know it was filmed in a huge warehouse in New Mexico) and that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. and therefore cannot be President.  All of the problems of passenger trains can be traced to an Arab oil sheikh, right?

GS>"Railwayist is merely a spoof.  Anyone seriously talking about the Pullman Company and High Speed Rail in one breath is not serious."

I'm afraid he's real.  He posts some of the same stuff under his own name elsewhere, and used to here.

My theory is that the ATA or such is paying him.  (Someone advanced a similar theory about Snell, if memory serves.)

In many years in public affairs work, the idea that someone is being paid by an opponent has been expressed many times.  Invariably, it is not so.  Not that paying someone to be an agent provocateur might not seem a good idea, the fact usually is that the would-be agent -- we'll call him RAILWAYIST here -- usually is wacko all by himself.  For some reason, some people just cannot believe that someone would espouse such wacko ideas if he were not being paid.  I've got news: they can and they do.

LK said:>>  "When the Post Office Department (it's name back then) decided to switch to trucks and terminated the Railway Post Office operation, the flood of train-off petitions at the ICC was almost instantaneous."

GS>"All true, but it was the storage mail contracts, basically, box cars with tight-lock couplers and high speed trucks, that provided the bulk of the revenue.  And what killed this little revenue generator was the ZIP Code. "

Well, I would say that was overreaching.  There was no reason why the new sorting facilities couldn't have been more centrally located.  In fact, a downtown facility had several advantages.  The traffic flow was counter to commuter loads, leaving downtown in the morning, and returning to it at night.  It was in an area that still had substantial mail generation.  Many downtowns then had nearby land potentially available.

GS>"That may seem like an over-reaching statement but it's true.  With the advent of the Zip Code, the USPO built suburban mail sorting centers off the railway lines and away from the large downtown sorting centers.  Local mail went to the suburbs, got sorted and returned to town.  Others got trucked to closer destinations and still others were flown out."

  That's how they chose to implement it, yes, but that wasn't the only option.

The back-and-forth of this discussion simply proves something I learned many years ago.  There rarely is a single cause for any occurrence.  The human mind might prefer nice simple, packaged explanations, but that's just not the way the world works.  I have no doubt that, in the case of passenger rail service, the loss of mail revenue was a significant factor in killing any number of trtains.  Whether it was the loss of RPOs or the coming of the Zip Code that led to the Post Office switching its transportation to trucks and airlines, is of little consequence.  The Post Office switched all first class mail to air service - killing its own premium revenue from Air Mail in the process - for its own purposes.  The bottom line, that is indisputable, is that passenger rail service was losing about $200 million annually when it finally was nationalized under the Amtrak banner in 1971.  We could blame the subsidized airlines, the "conspiracy" to make us captives to Arab oil sheikhs (ignoring the fact that most imported oil came to this country from Mexico, Venezuela and Canada - no sheikhs there), or even railroad managements, but the bottom line still would be the demise of the passenger train as some of us knew it.  I don't know nor care how old RAILWAYIST is, but I suspect he never got to ride on the great old trains; that comes through in his always having to trot out what someone else said about passenger trains, never what he experienced.

Re: "Simple Anatomy"

Eliminate RAILWAYIST's Millennium Falcon and NASCAR silliness and you're pretty much left with what passes for a true "intermodal" passenger network in many places around the world today.

In these United States, we have airline services (with operations not necessarily coordinated amongst individual carriers), a smattering of railroad and motor coach lines (once again, rarely working together), the occasional ferry boat or monorail (or some other type of specialty offering), and roadways of all sorts. To connect between mass transit modes, travelers are often forced to use road-based vehicles, requiring more than one physical change and otherwise greatly complicating the process.

There are exceptions...but that's all they are.

We might argue (perhaps even successfully) that this reality works for us and what may be de rigueur in Europe or Asia matters not to America and Americans.

Unfortunately, I believe we'll eventually find our approach to be unsustainable. Even worse, by the time that discovery has been made, it will be far too late to effect a painless (much less smooth) transition.

Larry, what were you saying about Cassandra on the "Millions of new jobs..." blog?  Every once in a while, I feel the same way!

Garl

Perhaps it is necessary in our society to be facing disaster before we can get people's attention focused.  

The Intermodal Transportation Institute at Denver U. wants to be both freight and passenger-focused.  Its curriculum for the MS degree it grants offers freight and passenger courses.  But it has been almost impossible to get passenger executives to join the board.  Why?  Bluntly, because passenger folks do not think intermodally.  At least the freight people, who used to sneer at piggyback as a cheap service that was good only to soak up excess capacity at really low non-compensatory rates, have learned that intermodal is a business from which all players - carriers, drayage contractors, terminal operators, et al, can profit.  Ever fly into Frankfurt?  You don't have to leave the terminal to get a DB rail connection; just ride the escalator down three levels and get on the next train to Koblenz or wherever.  In this country, how you get to the airport is no concern of the airline.  If you want a seamless system, you pretty much have to buy a cruise package.  At least you can get air, bus or van connection from airport to the dock, and your tour.  Of course, if it's point-to-point transportation you want with a lot of choice and flexibility, you're going to have to become a package.

One observation about airlines failure, if that be the correct word, to coordinate services:  As I said, they don't think intermodally, and getting to the airport is your responsibility.  But there also is much less need for coordination of services.  Ever since deregulation, airlines are free to operate between any city pairs they want, as long as they can get gate space and landing slots.  Amtrak, on the other hand, must coordinate with its host railroads for dispatcher slots, passes and meets.  There still is relatively little coordination between one Amtrak train and another, which can lead to some long layovers in Chicago, New Orleans, etc.

Re: "Revisionist History"

It has never been my intention to rewrite history. Surely, I wish to understand it, but only on its own terms.

Seemingly "naturally" (you'd have to know my family!), I'm an avid amateur historian. In addition, my primary field of study within railroading is Post-World War II North American intercity passenger train service. Esoteric to the extreme? You've got me on that one. [In fact, let's simply say that, as an area of concentration, it has never been known to open career doors!]

Still...

I only saw Mr. Claytor once after his departure from the Southern, when he delivered the eulogy at Charlie Luna's funeral. However, I did have an opportunity to speak with him concerning the SOU and their passenger operations during the mid-1970s.

My comment about his departure and L. Stanley Crane's arrival as President was simply meant to address the possibility that Mr. Claytor was more amenable to the idea of independent passenger operations than was Mr. Crane. I didn't have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Crane and would never wish to impugn his abilities or concern for his home road.

When I have a chance, I'd like to address the unique situation in which the Southern found itself - especially during Graham Claytor's tenure.

Perhaps later this evening.

Garl