[Edited a little bit] I love a good ‘turn of phrase’ or soundbite as much as anyone, but philosophically I have to disagree with or expand on the “All railroading is local” principle a little bit to more accurately reflect or include the networked and even potentially schizophrenic nature of the operation. Specifically, it’s that those localities are connected - as in a chain, and interactive with each other, so that what happens at one affects the others - and they’re subject to the ‘weakest link’ caveat, too.
So I would restate it as something like: “Railroading is fundamentally both enabled and limited by local conditions, and so has evolved to work within them, and as a result what’s done in one place likely won’t work well in another. But railroads also connect with other localities, and what happens at one can affect and impact the other places a lot, especially one that’s a ‘weak link’ in the chain of communities.”
Well, you can tell that advertising copywriters have nothing to fear from me . . . [:-^]
- Paul North.