This past week (I didn’t hear it until yesterday morning, though) the above was about a 5 minute segment near the end of the show - an interview at Boston’s South Station. Here’s a link to the show’s transcript and various download or listening options:
http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=08-P13-00019&segmentID=8
The book’s title is Train Time: Railroads and the Imminent Reshaping of the United States Landscape.
There are several clear factual errors or debatable points in the inteview, including:
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“On a railroad locomotive, you can set the cruise control, and then the engineer has to merely monitor the system.” ?
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“when you can run a freight train at 90 miles an hour, as happens frequently west of the Mississippi . . . And once people see freight trains moving at 70 or 75 miles an hour, they start wondering why there can’t be a passenger train.” [emphaisis added] ?
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“Most of Amtrak trains share the tracks with freight trains, and it’s pretty tricky to keep the freight trains out of the way of the passenger trains. The suggestion I have for the American public is, double track the freight lines again the way they were into the 1950’s.” ? [This isn’t the “magic bullet” for that problem.]
There’s also some other interesting points about real estate investment along lines where railroads were and will be coming back, and how the Prof. claims that’s where the “dot.com” boom money went. {Really ? I lost a lot, as did many others.]
Anyway, for what it’s worth.
On a cab ride I took a long time ago in an AEM7 the engineer set a Max speed control for each of different track segments.
I hope you’re not surprised that NPR put something less than factual on the airwaves…
Nope. Just didn’t want anyone here to think that by merely mentioning the program, I was blissfully endorsing everything that was said, without any critical analysis or knowing better - which is not to say that I caught all the errors, or that some other points are beyond question (they’re not).
Note, too that the statements I quoted were by the Prof. - not the program’s interviewer, who apparently merely “parroted” them. So that raises the interesting questions of:
Who does (or could, or should) have what responsibility - either journalistic, ethical, intellectual, or simply truthful - for checking / challenging/ corrected factual errors - and /or opinions or judgment calls ? (Whatever is done, though, should be clearly labeled or otherwise identified as such, so that anyone reading it later can figure who was repsonsible for what.)
Should the NPR reporter have done that - or just report it verbatim ? Should I have done what I did - or just referenced the program and let it go at that ? Or does that lead to either serial misstatements, or else the risk of one’s own seemingly “corrective” opinions overriding the subject’s statements ? Is it better to let those statements uncorrected - even if that then lets the person who made them hang himself ? Just some food for thought, in the competition of ideas. (And no, I’m not a journalist.)
There is a strong case to be made for an increased role for railroads. However, I think Prof. Stilgoe makes it harder to make the case with his statements that can not stand up to attacks from the opponets or rail. It would be better if he would just go away.
Gee … love that 20/20 tunnelvision that academia has from the safety of their tenured offices on campus…Someday, they might venture out of their sheltered little world and visit us lowly common folks out in the real world.
Perhaps HARVARD could issue a recall notice on their “old boys club” diploma mill practices, starting with this naive soul?
Well, I just ordered the book at $19.97 from Amazon. We’ll see what it says.
A problem, as I see it, is that if the author is significantly off base he may still become a “media expert” on railroads and foster misconceptions that may prove harmful.
As I said, we’ll see what it says.
The problem I see is a tendency of Editors and Authors not to have their work vetted and proof read. Several items that I composed at work I had an almost impossible time getting them even proof read. The attitude was you do good work. WRONG!! Trying to do the best job I still made mistakes. ex. unable to find anyone to check my post “if RRs electrify”