Andy Rooney: email is a "all the charm of a freight train".

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

ALERT!

Did any of you see 60 Minutes sunday October 4th? Andy Rooney on one of his rants said an email was “all the charm of a freight train”.

Play your patriotic music

Friends, train engineers, brakemen, railfans, foamers and other descriptives that I can’t repeat here, one of the favorite things in our lives, a freight train, has been maligned by another mean reporter at 60 Minutes. This is an attack on us, our livelyhoods, our obsessions, that we sometimes even recreate on our bedroom train layouts. A freight train can be more romantic than Courtney Cox in a bikini, Angelina Jolie going to fetch you a beer or Jennifer Garner kicking down your front door. Its time we stand up for ourselves. Its time we fight back and fight back with fire. Lets all EMAIL Andy Rooney for maligning us as people who love freight trains. DO IT, and my friends, do it for AMERICA!.

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If you say so, my friend, I know it can get lonely up there in the land of 10,000 lakes … If we must compare freight trains to women, a more probable matchup is with those who, like so many freight cars, “Exceeds Plate C.”

Dave Nelson

3

It’s a shame that none of us have acccess to Andy Rooney’s home address. If I did, I would send him a copy of TRAINS Magazine, and maybe a copy of Model Railroader as well. Anything to help educate this moron…

4

Maybe he just likes passenger trains.

Jeff

5

You might want to find a couple or three back issues of “Railroad” magazine, (before it became “Railfan & Railroad”) and send along with aforementioned magazines. You know; “Pretty Girls” in short Skirts posing next to Trains, etc.(don’t forget the “Personal” Ads in the back of the magazine either.)

[Where is the “Tongue in Cheek Smiley” anyway?!]

6

I remember a time when I could not have agreed with Andy Rooney more and his opinion of freight trains. I had to stop for a long NP freight train while on my way to the Dentist with an impacted wisdom tooth. Just when I could see the caboose coming the train came to a halt and stood there for about 15 minutes then backed slowly up into the yard. If ever anyone cursed a freight train it was I on that particular day.

Al - in - Stockton

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Maybe that means he likes e-mail. [:P]

8

That’s another great instance of ‘the pot calling the kettle black’ . . . [:-^]

Dave Nelson - [(-D] [tup] Good one !

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To the vast majority of the general public who does not share our enthusiasm for trains and railroading, Andy Rooney’s comments are on the mark. To me, freight trains can be and are quite fascinating, but charming can be a bit of a stretch as part of a description for 10,000 tons of coal from the PRB en route to Bailly.

10

When my wife and I were dating we made an agreement to do something I wanted to do in the morning and something she wanted to do in the afternoon. We went to Michigan City Indiana on the South Shore in the morning and the Chicago Museum of Art in the afternoon. We came to understand each others interests and enjoy them. Both a Claude Monet painting and a freight train have much more charm than an e-mail. Most of my e-mails end up in the trash bin.Rooney could have used a better analogy.

11

I’m pretty sure I understand what he meant. Freight trains may be appealing to many of us who post here and on other train forums, but charming…? Nawww. An annoyance? Yeah, I could see that, at times. Freights don’t exactly run on the same timing mechanism as traffic lights do, and people who are pressed, no matter why they are pressed, are not likely to steel themselves to look for the charm in either their predicament or the object obstructing their progress. In that case, a broken down city bus would be in the same category.

Anyway, much ado about nothing.

-Crandell

12

Does somebody actually take Andy Rooney seriously? He’s the bigest reason that I shun ‘60 Minutes.’ I’d just as soon watch the continuous commercial on QVC…

Chuck

13

Crandell has it right - much ado about nothing.

60 minutes has deteriorated substantially from what it was and I no longer watch; even if they have a promotional ad beforhand about something which may interest me.

14

World War II vet Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes, September 1, 2002:

Some people are afraid of everything. Other people aren’t afraid of anything. A lot of Americans are afraid to fly now and it’s ridiculous. You’re more likely to win the lottery than die in a plane crash.

Fear of flying is bad for the airline business - they’ve been in financial trouble for years anyway and it got worse on September 11th.

Airlines have treated us so badly over the years, it’s hard to feel sorry for them. You feel sorry for the good people who work for airlines.

Congress has voted to give them $15 billion in emergency relief and I don’t understand that. Railroads have been in financial trouble for 50 years. Why doesn’t Congress give railroads $15 billion?

What ever happened to travel by train anyway?

This country is dotted with abandoned or little used railroad stations. Cute stores have moved in.

In New York, they tore down the magnificent Pennsylvania Station. Michigan Central Station in Detroit, an architectural gem, was abandoned; its idle tracks rust away waiting to be boiled down.

There are thousands of miles of empty railroad tracks running contiguously with crowded highways.

Our heavy loads should be moved on steel rails instead of rubber tires on highways where trucks play accordion with the cars.

There are 1,345,000 railway freight cars in the United States. Each one can carry several times as much cargo as the biggest truck.

Using railroads would reduce our use of oil.

It takes 1,500 gallons of fuel for a plane to fly from New York to Chicago with 100 people on board. A train with 1,000 people can make the same trip on fewer than 300 gallons.

The United States is way behind in train travel as anyone knows who’s been to Europe or Japan. Trains everywhere are better, faster and more luxurious.

There’s no greater feeling of luxury and satisfaction than being whisked 500 miles closer to your destination whi

15

60 Minutes is a total waste of time and Andy Rooney is a grumpy old man who could fulminate over the fact that the handle that flushes the toilet is on the wrong side.

Having said that, I must regretfully admit that freight trains are not quite a charming as they used to be. (Who’s the grumpy old man now?) I remember when you could watch trains and read all the slogans, Way of the Zephyrs, Route of the Eagles, Santa Fe All The Way. The boxcars were of a variety, the Milwaukee Road ribsides, some of the composite boxcars of the Frisco and the caboose on the end. Then you could tell what part of the country the car comes from and wonder what a Nacionales de Mexico car was doing in the midwest.

But time marches on and we have to be content with the variety of color schemes on the BNSF locomotives, which run behind my house. Sic Transit Gloria Mundi.

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As it happens Andy Rooney was one of the people who submitted a piece for Al Stauffer’s “Thoroughbreds” about the NYC Hudson engines. Rooney recalled growing up in I think Albany and how he would meet his Dad at the train when he had gone down the New York City on business and how impressive the trains were etc…so he’s not anti-trains by any means, but he might not feel a train of solid double-stacks are all that interesting.

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NY Times 2005:

Did you ever wonder how Andy Rooney gets to work?

Well, for several decades he rode the New Haven line from Rowayton, just like the rest of us.

‘‘I was a pretty regular commuter,’’ he said in a telephone interview. ‘‘I caught a 6:11 train in the morning for many years, then I’d catch a 5:27 home.’’

Mr. Rooney, the longtime essayist on ‘‘60 Minutes,’’ is one of the many celebrities who travel on Metro-North, risking the unwanted attention of fellow riders, not to mention the vagaries of the train service.

Mr. Rooney, who raised four children in Connecticut but recently moved to New York City, said that throughout his commuting years, he was never bothered by his fellow travelers.

‘‘It’s a pretty good group,’’ he said. ‘‘They tend to be more sensible than the average person on the street – educated, bright, successful.’’

He said autograph seekers were rare, but he noted, ‘‘If someone nodded at me and said ‘I like your stuff,’ that was fine with me.’’

http://bobbyderailed.blogspot.com/2006/07/grumpy-old-men.html

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The highpoint on my visit to Santa Cruz, CA was when the train to the Davenport cement plant ran down the street, blocking traffic. It was great examining the locos and hopper cars passing by five feet away at a walking pace.

Mark

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Wouldn’t it be a shock if he visited this message board and read it. Maybe one of his friends has seen this.

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I still think that a lot of people are missing the point: interesting and charming are NOT synonymous.