To continually prevent passenger trains from getting to their destinations
on time and sit on sidings for a few hours is surely disgraceful.To allow
these trains to display the Flag of The United States is twice as disgraceful.This once used to be a country where the people envoyed
the railroads.Not no more.Especially when some of our railroads want to
change over and run on Greed instead of Tracks
DaveBr
What??
When did railroads not run on greed?[oX)]
My friend, nothing has really changed…the railroads used to make money on passengers and also having a nice shiney fleet of passenger trains used to make for good public relations…meaning more money from freight revenues of impressed shippers AND a public who would also be impressed and then buy the railroads stock offering…NOW the passenger business is all in the hands of AMTRAK since the railroads stopped making money on the passengers and NOW frieight is what makes the money instead of passengers. What has changed is not the idea of a railroad making money (Greed, as you put it) but HOW they make their money. THIS, MY FRIEND IS GOOD OLD AMERICAN CAPITOLISM AT ITS BEST!
They do now.
Allan.
Freight is always what made the money. Try an example: You own a parking lot and have customers who want to park their cars there. Somebody asks if he can rent a portion of it for less than you can get renting parking spaces. My answer? Well yeah, when I’m not busy. Before you get all bent out of shape ask some questions. Was the train on time? If not would you hold a perishable or time sensitive train for a bunch of tourists? Was trackwork being done down the line? Should the train run over a broken rail or through a wreck? There are lots of reasons to stick Amtrak in the hole for awhile. People on board can always go get dinner or a drink on long distance trains. they aren’t in jail. Everybody say’s how great rail travel is and how you can see the country. Well they just got to know a little bit of it up close and personal.
i have yet to ever see amtrak ever sit in a “siding” for hours… now i have seem them delayed due to mechanical problems of either on the amtrak end or on the freight carriers end…but mechanical issues are going to happen at some point… that is a fact of life for eveything mechanical in nature… also…the other major couse for amtrak delays WEATHER…unlike freight trains… if thier is a chance of flash flooding in an area… amtrak MUST run RESTRICTED SPEED (at least they do on csx) through the entier flash flood pron zone…i dont know about you…but haveing to run at a speed that will permint stoping within 1/2 the rang of vistion insted of track speed is a major time killer… as freight trains only have to aproch bridges and covers that could be flooded perpared to stop…little bit of a time differance…and its set to the side of safty for the passangers on amtrak…
also… if you didnt know it… amtrak can and dose have in its agreement with the freight carriers it runs over…that if the train is not keep ontime due to delays brought on by the freight carrier…(bad dispatching…ext…) amtrak can and dose fine the freight carrier a dollor amount for evey min that amtrak is behind schedual…
and last but not least… you must have been on a train that was delayed for what ever reason…delays are going to happen… no differnt then any delay your going to experince on the highway due to a workzone…or traffic due to congested interchange ramps at some location… thing of the railroad like the interstate highway system… you notice how work zone delays affect your traval time…notice how congestion of traffic affects your traval time? well…its the same way on the railroads…
to make a statment like you just said is either gross lack of information… or you are just P.O.ed that your train was late getting someplace
csx engineer
Very interesting, a good point. If railro
Recently,iI think in Trains mag,I saw a report on delays to Amtrak in the west. 20% of the delays were on BNSF. The other 80% were on UP[xx(].
Did you adjust for the fact that UP track gets more Amtrak trains.
Railway Age prints excerpts from the issues 75 or 100 years ago. In one issue a year or so ago they printed part of an article discussing whether passenger service was truly proitable given the delays it caused to the freight trains, and this was from the 1800’s!
Dave H.
I can’t understand the post…whats it mean?
Adrianspeeder
Nobody makes money hauling people anywhere in the world unless one or both of two factors are present:
-
They provide a premium service for which they can reasonably extract the very maximum fare a customer is willing to pay (i. e. a taxicab, which picks you up at a specific address and delivers you to another specific address - door to door; or a cruise line, which provides services above and beyond and is not really public transportation), or;
-
They get a lot of money from the governments (state, federal, local) in the area they serve. Greyhound, for instance, uses highways paid for by you; airlines use ground facilities such as terminals and air traffic control which is paid for by you (and lots of airlines are having trouble making it even with these subsidies). The highly touted railroads in Japan, England, France and Germany get humongous bucks from their governments. In the 1970s when Conrail was being created out of the wreckage of the bankrupt railroads in the Northeast, Penn Central was losing in excess of 360 million dollars per year, or just about a million per day. Someone got curious about what foreign railroads got for subsidies and the National railroads of Japan and France both were getting about the equivalent of a million dollars per day, the same as what Penn Central was losing. And this was thirty years ago.
But in the 1950s we decided, here in this country, to put our money into an interstate highway system, and not into a rail transportation network.
So you got what you paid for. Be happy with it.
Old Timer
just another post whining and crying about the Union Pacific.
it’s starting to get a bit sad on this forum…
Do boxcars full of shackled prisoners count as freight, or passenger rail?
And the original poster never has responed to anything posted…I smell a troll. [:(!]
Even see the flick Wall Street? Great line in it from MIchael Douglas (Gordon Gecko) telling stickholders that “GREED IS GOOD”. [:o)][:p][:)]
[quote]
Originally posted by DaveBr
Greed is one of the deadly sins and yet people seem to overlook that. It is a good thing God is so forgiving then eh? Just thought I would mention that as a point of fact.
Pardon me,I didn’t think I was supposed to stay up all nite to answer .Anyway on the other post on “Trainorders” ,AMTRAK, A person stated that yesterday UP is going to continue for 3 more years to either hold or put trains on sidings…If I 'm wrong,Please correct me. DaveBr
…WELLLLL!!!