I don’t understand what you’re trying to say here. Can you explain please?
I am looking at some of the posters above who gladly “excuse” railroad management on the basis of the “lack of the right crystal ball” – like they’ve got one or ever used one – as though failure to anticipate demand is a perfectly legitimate business excuse if you’re a railroad company, and a reason to continue to collect bonuses and salaries, along the lines that “the company is always right,” even when they screw up. It is the “admirable” quality addressed by Spencer Tracy in the movie referred to above by a retired BN official who watched the whole thing unfold before his eyes.
Ed, ed, and mud,
You all won’t face up to the truth: THERE WAS NO “EXCESS CAPACITY” OF THE US RAIL SYSTEM. There was only fixed capital that wasn’t being marketed correctly.
Hmmmmm, ed, ed, and mud. Reminds me of the “locals” in those old Newhart sitcoms. “Hi, I’m Mudchicken, this is my brother ed, and this is my other brother ed.”
[:D]
I still fault basic USA transportation policy that did not include LAND USE in economic planning when it was decided that all highway taxes should support only highway expansion, maintenance, and repair.
Which means that freight railroading in the USA is the ONLY mode that really is self-suporting and that indeed helps support its competition.
Some think when they can’t make an argument based on facts or reason they must then turn to a personal attack. Oh well, their statements are out there for the whole world to read.
If one looks at the CP track between Chicago and Milwaukee, you will notice that track 1 is still jointed rail in many places, whereas track 2 is welded rail. This is because at some point in the recent past (early 80’s; I do not know who owned the track then, SOO, Milw, or CP), the plan was to eliminate one of mains (track 1) and convert track 1 into controlled sidings. Fortunately, this plan was never carried out, because now the track is at capacity (according to CP).
In the late 90’s, CP added a new set of crossovers to their main line between Milwaukee and Chicago (C&M Subdivision) at WEPCO, partially to give them flexible access to the Pleasant Prairie power plant (now served by UP), but also to add flexibility to daily operations. Another set of crossovers was recently added to the same main line, this set at Oakwood Avenue in Milwaukee near the new Amtrak station at Mitchell Field (which BTW, has greatly increased ridership in and out of Chicago).
A few years before the UP took over the CNW, the CNW proposed an agreement with whoever (CP? SOO?) owned the above mentioned trackage whereby the CNW could eliminate it’s New Line (now Milwaukee) subdivision and run the trains on the CP/SOO tracks. The idea was shot down because CP/SOO claimed that their trackage was already at capacity.
Interesting how the pendulum swings. Imagine how successful a railroad like the North Shore would be today. Fast trains, all-electric operation, frequent stops, good running time, nice equipment. If only the North Shore had not been sold for scrap and much of the ROW been developed…
I wonder if either BNSF or UP’s crystal balls hint at the potential for the development of superconductivity. If a metal is ever developed that has superconductivity prope
CHICAGO & LOS ANGELES RAIL ROAD … chicago to los angeles main line
TRIPPLE TRACKS
ELECTRIFIED
HIGH SPEED
A WHOLE NEW RAILROAD NEEDS TO BE BUILT
And what would you use for money to acquire a right of way and build it?
No doubt in my mind that the invention of a metal with super conducting power would cause a rather dramatic in the location factor of new power generating stations. However, unless someone can also come along with a plan to divert the lower Mississippi river to flow somewhere around Gillette, WY, don’t plan on seeing any big power plants going up around the PRB mines. OK, I suppose that if we are dreaming, we can invent an efficient electric generating system that uses a gas other than steam to turn the turbines.
So what if in a decade or two, this scheme becomes possible? Our what if, and perhaps more likely, nuclear powered electric generation becomes the method for new and replacement generation capacity? What would hindsight say about a multi-billion dollar investment in railroad track to increase capacity to haul coal?
Hear is my point. Posts on this thread have reported that some senior railroad managers strongly disagreed with with the reductions of routes and trackage prevalent in the 1980’s. I don’t know for sure, but I doubt that any of these people could have come close to predicting just where the capacity problems would be developing at the turn of the of this century. But suppose they were dead on. Could the railroads have afforded to carry excess capacity just to fill a need that wouldn’t appear for 10 or 20 years? I seriously doubt it. In fact the carrying cost of the excess capacity may have precluded building any thing close to the infrastructure now in place to carry PRB coal. As I recall, at the time the PRB began to develop, track into that area was not much more than junk status.
Hindsight is wonderful. It works even better if one can ignore any possible negative consequences of a different course of action.
Jay Eaton
“Afforded to carry excess capacity …?”
Capacity is what permitted premium service, fast cycle times, low load wear on mainlines.
Every study I have seen, with a few exceptions unique to geographical circumstances, found positive economic advanatages to the railroad company in maintaining its “excess capacity.” Indeed, for mainlines – again some geographical exceptions --it was never “excess,” railroad company’s enjoyed better rates of return than after the “excess” was trimmed.
Railroads got rid of excess capacity. They continued to struggle. Cost of operations went up, not down.
I have a specific recollection of the Milwaukee main, Chi-TC. Double track with 135 MGT capacity, operating at about 40 MGT. Now, that’s excess capacity.
MILW wanted 4R money to repair it.
FRA said no way, we are not going to give you $101 million to maintain that much “wasted” capacity.
MILW produced an elegant engineering study which showed conclusively that there was no financial penalty to operating that “much excess capacity.” That, to the contrary, the alternative proposed single line with long sidings was more expensive to operate, would generate excess costs to the company in increased transit times, increased equipment cycle times, and operating complexity. Sprints would not be competitive with highway traffic.
<
Maybe there wasn’t in the Pacific Northwest. Also, it doesn’t address excess capacity in relation to where capacity is needed.
Almost like granting government land in Alaska for a midwest railroad.
Yes there was.
Dave, look at pages 7 to 12, November 1976 Trains, and pages 14 and 15, December 1976 Trains.
I think what nanaimo is refering to is what we all read (and therefore took as a basic tenet) in the railroad press during the 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s - namely the economy was shifting from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, therefore there was no more need for carrying lots of heavy bulky things, ergo railroads had “excess” capacity. I believed it, we all believed it.
The problem is, no one cared to mention that a “service” based economy had just as much a need for adaquate mass transportation systems as the manufacturing economy, maybe more. Because even though there was an ostensible shift in the economy, the demand for manufactured things continued to grow with the ever expanding economy (the occassional recession not withstanding). Instead of railroads hauling most cars out of Detroit, they began hauling in foreign cars from US ports in great numbers. Instead of most consumer goods being hauled by railroads from the MIdwest to the cities, now railroads were hauling consumer goods from ports to cities. It should be noted that the average length of haul by rail for these products probably increased, e.g. instead of the bulk of auto hauls from Midwest to Northeast, now that haul came from Portland OR and LA/Long Beach to the Northeast.
In the meantime, there was still a continued increase in US ag production, and coal demand for the most part continued to increase incrementally as Clean Air requirements increased longer haul coal trains fro
It is good to be back from my trip to Arizona, glad to see you guys were able to keep things normal!
Significant quote from Trains, Nov, 1976 p 8
"The Department of Transportation, which is holding the purse strings on 1.6 billion dollars worth of Federal loans for rail rehabilitation, concludes from these figures:
- “Many thousands of miles of rail line in the nations’s system carry an almost imperceptible level of traffic” and
- “When one considers the declining financial condition of the industry together with the continuingt deterioration of track, it becomes very apparent that limited resources are being stretched too far.”
The then current figure of 193,500 route miles of US track are sub divided as follows:
A Main - 20 million or more gross ton miles per year… 17.1% of trackage
Potential A Main - "through line in excess capacity corridor 11.6% of trackage
B Main - Less than 20 million GTMbut more than 5 21.7% of trackage
A Branch - Less than 5 million GTM but at least 1 21.9% of trackage
B Branch - less than 1 million GTN 25.6% of trackage
Defense Essential Branch 2.1% of trackage
Discussion then centers on Chicago - Twin Cities (main lines of BN, Milw, North Western, Rock, and Soo). “these carriers operate 2171 route miles. The traffic density is 111m GTM yet the line capacity of these five roads totals 272 million gross tons. Individual disparties range from a density of 38MGT vs capacity of 49MGT for BN to density of 20MGT vs capacity of 100MGT for Milw.”
further…,."DOT argues that 2 or 3 routes would suffice; and that excess capacity should be pared by:
- mergers
- joint trackage rights
- downgrading
Other corridors discussed:
Chi - Pitt 4 routes 1802 ttl miles, 438 short rou
Murphy,
Why? Because the insiders should have known, if indeed they didn’t have an ulterior motive.
Ed,
The DOT in the 1970’s was the Brock Adams era, right? There’s your explanation - stupid is as stupid does.
You should ask yourself why a 1970’s era government agency would come up with such conclusions (“railroads need to reduce capacity”) when even then there was the perception that oil was running out and there would be a need to shift traffic from road to more efficient modes?
Also, don’t those first two statements you relayed say it all?
“$1.6 billion in purse strings”
“…limited resources are being stretched too far.”(!?!)
That first statement can lead to a conclusion of possible blackmail by the federales. Question: Why would the federal government be so insistent on reducing railroad capacity? Who gained by this capacity reduction, railroads or truckers/barge lines?
That second statement, if taken in the latter context, would lead one to believe that the “limited resources” were being pushed to the max, e.g. demand for railroads was exceeding demand. It doesn’t matter whether you are a supply sider or a Keynesian, that section of statement #2 is counterintuitive to the first section of statement #2, e.g. “When one considers the declining financial condition of the industry together with the continuing deterioration of track,…”. If trackage was deteriorating, how could putting current rail traffic on a single deteriorating track be a solution to keeping traffic on double and triple deteriorating track? Answer - it wouldn’t, rather it would instead accelerate the deterioration of the remaining track.
But, of course if it was just a question of maintenance funding from the federales, it would have made more sense to fix all the relevent trackage, and with this balance extend the life expectancy of all trackage by sharing the loads, rather than fixing a single track and ex
DOT published Preliminary Standards, Classification, and Designation of Lines of Class 1 Railroads in the United States in August 1976.
Why are you trying to blame the Democrats when Ford was President ?
ED (MP173)
Do you know anything about
http://www.newspaperarchive.com/DesktopDefault.aspx
Is it worth joining ?
The December, 1976 Trains, pages 14 and 15 put the previous month’s discussion into graphic form…3 US maps with depicting A Main lines and Potential A Main lines on one map, B Mains on a second map and Branch lines on the other.
Dave, regarding Brock Adams…cannot comment. Back in that era my needs did not include Brock Adams.
Ok, here goes on this. You and I agree on the Fed basically holding the purse strings and thus the power. I do remember certain things from the 70’s including my senior thesis in college entitled “Can Conrail Succeed”. (BTW…I said yes). There was not enough money to fix all rail lines which needed fixing Dave. The term “not enough tea in China” comes to mind and it is a bit ironic, now isnt it?
The Fed was very selective in who was going to get the $$$ and who wasnt. Their thinking was that they wanted out of the railroad business as quickly as possible, hence the best lines were going to get the cash. PC/Conrail in the east was essential. Without that system, GM would shut down quickly (more irony, huh? now it is UAW thru Delphi that can shut GM down).
There simply wasnt enough money at the Federal nipple for all.
Dave, take a look at the maps on pages 14/15 in the December, 1976 trains and decide if those lines were just “fixed assets that were not marketed correctly”.
Where was the money going to come from to fund not only the rehabilitation of those lines, plus the five man crews?
Where is the growth on today’s rail lines? Where are the bottlenecks?
I spent a morning at Flagstaff last week and watched BNSF attack gravity with a never ending stream of trains. Train after train after train. Lots of motive power. They kept the parade moving. That is a testiment to Rob Krebs philosophy of “if you build it, they will come.” He was right on the money. Unfortunately, he didnt really get to realize much credit for it, as Wall Street demanded higher returns and quest
I have my original copy of that DOT study. Still use it as it has some good statistical references regarding capacity.
The rest of the study was garbage.
You might wonder how a government agency just up and started lecturing railroads on what their problems were. A little chutzpah there. Remember, DOT had no experience with railroading outside of its safety agency, FRA. I believe Tom Lamphier’s comments earlier on this thread were directed to this study, the kind of “whoa, whoa, whoa” from a professional railroader to a bunch of bureaucrats who knew nothing about railroading on their “bright idea” which they clearly thought would solve everything.
And this generated the confrontation with Congress as well. The study was ostensibly designed to support FRA’s tying of 4R rehab funds to “capacity rationalization,” a new approach to national rail policy. Except, it wasn’t national rail policy. Congress had intended no such thing.
Essentially, bureaucrats were substituting their “ideas” in place of those of both the rail industry and Congress – which was the authentic source of national rail policy. Then, those same bureaucrats who were trying to lecture everyone else on railroading and efficient operation, botched the administration of their own 4-R program so badly it did almost no good for its intended beneficiaries.
The rail infrastructure was in a crisis because of declining investment during the 50s and 60s – Dieselization and its economic effects were sucking away funds from maintenance – but when Congress allocated money to help, less than 6% was distributed after 3 years, as FRA and DOT tried to muscle their “new” ideas in on top of authentic national rail policy. Help the railroads? Hell no, that study had nothing to do with helping railroads. It was more important for DOT and FRA to get control of the funding and the policy than it was to get the money out where it was supposed to do some good. That study was a mere prop.
nanaimo,
The 1970’s was an era of homogenous politics. It really didn’t matter who was in control of the beauracracy, Democrats or Republicans, the effects were essentially identical. Thanks to Nixon, we got the EPA, the 55 mph speed limit, et al. Ford didn’t change anything one way or the other being basically impotent as President, and Carter basically topped the irrational policy sundae with the culmination of Staggers, yes to Conrail but no to Milwaukee, et al.
Ed - On that map, how does the Milwaukee, CNW, WP, D&RGW, SP, and RI lines appear? I do not have that copy of TRAINS, so please enlighten me. Is the PCE deemed “excess”? If so, knowing what we know today do you think that was a rational, educated, even sensical designation?
Let’s face some facts here. The policy during the 1970’s was that energy was scarce, hence the 55 mph speed limit, et al. Yet instead of applying that philosophy to the US railroad infrastructure (e.g. save national energy consumption by shifting as much freight as possible from trucks to rails), we did just the opposite, encouraging the loss of rail infrastructure.
Don’t you think that is a classic case of counterintuitive policy application?
How many lines show up as being excess capacity just because of the temporary downturn in rail business during the two decades of self-inflicted collapse? How was it self-inflicted? We all discussed this before - 1. defered maintenance to sex up stock prices for potential mergers, 2. The introduction of the 100 ton car, 3. The lack of labor rationalization to keep up with modern times.
Are you going to sit there and tell us that the PCE, CNW, RI et al were all legitimate candidates for excessive existence just because the culture of the federal beauracracy at the time was imbided with a lack of foresight and common sense? Or will you take a look at that map and discern some obvious and gratuitous errors of judgement on the part of DOT? You and
Dave,
The PCE appears on the B main lines map, meaning between 20 and 5 gross ton-miles per mile per year, from the Twin Cities to Tacoma. The maps in Trains, and DPM’s comments, are mostly about the 11 Potential A Main (excess capacity) corridors. The Milwaukee Road was one of 5 in the Chicago-Twin Cities corridor, 1 of 7 in the Chicago-Ohio River, 1 of 8 Chicago-KC and 1 of 5 Chicago-Omaha. Trains did not discuss the lines west of St. Paul-Cheyenne-Colorado Springs-Houston.
You said-
I say there was excess capacity in the mid-west, causing the Milwaukee, Rock Island and North Western to not earn the cost of capital. Will you agree there was excess capacity in the mid-west ?