The Railroads are Dying

Trains Magazine General Discussion
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Here’s one to ponder…If you asked 10 people on the street how the railroads are doing, I would bet that 8 or 9 would say that they’re dying, they’re a non-issue in America. Who uses them? What do they haul? The remaining one or two would have no data to even offer that much of an opinion. Does that prospect concern anybody?

I work in transportation and when newly-hired people sit in with me for orientation (since I’m the RR guy), a lot of them sheepishly ask, “Um, are the railroads still a viable way to move freight?” These are educated people who are starting a career in transportation.

I think a lot of this outlook that the RR’s are on the way under is based on people seeing the branch line in their hometown being torn up and being made into a bike trail. People don’t realize how the RR’s have sort of mimicked the interstate highway system (their supposed nemesis) and have retrenched largely to a high-volume, hub-to-hub, corridor focused system (i.e. many fewer lanes, but more capacity and more trains in those lanes.) The average person has no idea about that. They’ve never seen the triple track at North Platte or Logan Hill in the Powder River Basin. They don’t know about the BNSF Double-Track Transcon Main. They have no idea what it means that CTC was added to a line or sidings were added or lengthened. They just know what they see, which, with regard to RR’s, frankly isn’t much for most folks. The trains that they do see just appear as random things. No real rhyme or reason to them. No pattern. No big picture.

Do the RR’s care that this perception exists. I’ve directly heard Sr. Execs from BNSF, NS, CSX & CN say no. When asked if this bothers them, they said that they wouldn’t support any advertising to change this perception.

Did the Union Pacific “Building America” campaign do any good with regard to this issue. Well, it was flashy. It had some nice landscape shots. It even won some awards, but rea

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I agree 100 % !!!

No joke, here in Europe many people think in the same way: The railroads are at the end of the line.

Good joke!!!

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I took Professor Ballshbaugh’s course in “Transportation Planning” at MIT in (if memory is correct) in 1952. I asked why railroads weren’t included, only highways and airports -not even marine ports, come to think of it! He knew I was an EE Major. He said: “David, railroads have no future in America, if you want to become a railway electrification engineer, go to France and become a Frenchman.” I didn’t follow his advice, and with my interest in music became an architectural acoustics engineer, but retained my lifelong interest in railroads and subscribed, for a while, to “La Vie du Rail” in addition to TRAINS and for a while Model Railroader. Why did Ballsbaugh say this? Who directed USA transportation planning? Remember it is “The Sloan School of Economics” and GM has contributed a substantial portion of the MIT budget. Ballsbaugh was succeded by my classmate, Marty Wohl. (Hope I got the spelling right) He cooauthored a book on transportation. A quote as close to accurate as my memory permits: “Funding public transit makes no economic sense because public transit does not pay for itself from the farebox.” He was succeded by an (ex?) Israel (non-religious, I am sure, despite his name) Moshe ben Akiva, who wrote an article in a magazine he edits stating that American have no preference for trains over buses if fares, speed, access, and schedules are the comperable. Right in his own back yard the Downeast service has proved him wrong. Eisenhower said we should guard against the military-industrial complex, but he should have warned against the highway-oil-rubber-auto complex. Their goals: Maximize oil profits, even if it meant funding Islamic terrorism, and making it impossible for any American to enjoy a full life without owning an automobile and using it. Milton Friedman, another secularist, taught at MIT and his book said “The only responsibility of a corporation is to maximize corporate profits.” Picture this scene in your mind: MIT Professor Milton Friedman teaching IBM Corporate e

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Dave-

You have excellently put into words part of what I was thinking about raising the awareness of the public. It isn’t just advertising.

One of the current items in slate.msm.com slams Dave Gunn (Amtrak) for having cried wolf many times in his career. As you probably know, he doesn’t sugar coat anything he is involved in, but more importantly, it often takes something like that to say we have a serious problem here guys. He got enough of our representatives to understand to at least keep limping along, but here is a question. How many of the new riders became aware of the service because of the press? I’d bet more than a few.

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Dblstack: I hesitate to dive in to this, because you’ve rolled so many issues into one post. I’m only good at doing one thing at a time. So rather than go point-by-point, or issue-by-issue, I’ll attack just two: p.r. and the basic question, if railroads are dying.

Railroads are not dying. Period. They haven’t been healthier as a technology, in comparison to other transportation technologies, in almost 100 years. There is no question that for overland transportation of people and goods, the railroad has almost unlimited potential that is still only partially tapped. The May issue, which we’re finishing up this week, goes into detail how Switzerland is rebuilding its core railroad system from scratch to eliminate long-haul trucking from between its borders. They’re a small, densely populated, geographically disadvantaged country, so they have no choice but to be a leader. Other countries will eventually come to the same decision, when they have to – no one wants to spend money until it’s impossible to do otherwise.

In the U.S. – which is what I think you want to know about – the railroad has risen from the near-dead to become the acknowledged, preferred method of mass transit in large cities. Every city with any ambition for the future is building light- or heavy-rail or commuter systems (Milwaukee unfortunately is not one of them). Thirty years ago, there were exactly five U.S. cities with significant rail commuter. Now there are, what, 50? You can’t ignore this. As for Amtrak, we’ll know for sure in another two or three years, but I think it has rebounded from a nadir of inconsequentiality and has nothing ahead of it but growth. Its value to run corridor trains is increasingly acknowledged. Look at California for proof. The long-haul train, if it hasn’t failed by now, probably won’t, and increasingly they are becoming a series of connected corridor trains. That will inevitably lead to growth.

What might be dying is the old way of doing business hauling f

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The only people the railroad is concerned with caring if the RR is in business are the shippers and potential investors. And they seem to be well aware of how the railroads are doing since business (and the stock) is up.

Dave H.

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railroads dying ? NO!

academia in this country getting dumber? YES! (both at the public school level and at the college level…public schools here in Denver warehouse kids/ don’t teach & can’t figure out why their high school grads are avoided like the plague by employers…)
Willy2 - hope Omaha is different .

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Mark, would you dare editorialize on the facts of just why Milwaukee is NOT spending the money? How far away in time is the overdue extension of Chicago commuter service to Milwaukee? Then possibly you could extend this analysis to why the “Big Dig” did not include the rail connection? Why has New York City shied from light rail, where it would solve some specific problems as on 42nd street and in downtown Brooklyn, even with the successful New Jersey Line an example across the Hudson River? And why were other cities successful? Chicago, now even looking at streetcars? The California cities? I’ve heard some very interesting stories about what derailed for a long time some rail freight projects in New York. The case of a couple of feet of connecting track in the Harlem River Yard that Conrail wouldn’t install until the State or City agreed to pay for it until they derailed a freight right across the Mott Haven junction tying up a commuter rush hour and Metro North said NO MORE! This might be a particularly important story with the new govenment in California and many railfans might wonder what the future there might be and what they can do in a positive direction. Dave

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OUR COUNTRY IS RUN BY SPECIAL INSTREAST NOT THE PEOPLE BAN SPECIAL INSTREAST

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Dave H hit on the head…
Railroads dont want to sell themselves to you, the railfans, or John Q Public.
Why would they?
Unless your the shipping agent for Dow Chemicals, or the rep from the local GM plant, you have nothing they want, unless your looking to invest a few million or so in that railroad.
Wonder why the billboard boxcar is gone?
Remember when the covered hopper had the users name and product advertised on it?
They dont need to attract you, your not going to ride their passenger train, they have none for you to ride.
They are not selling you the product in the rail car, because most of the products you can or would buy are shipped by truck.

They are flying under the public’s radar on purpose, because they dont want the public involved in their business, and all the rules and regs, both operational and financial, that would then happen.
I am not saying railroads are, or will do anything illegal, but, unless your stuck at a crossing, or are a railfan, most folks ignore railroads, and that suites the railroads just fine, they can go about their business without worring about what the public thinks of them, because John Q normally dosnt.

Amtrak has to attrach the public, after all, they are the customer in the truest sense or the word.
True, you are a railroad customer also, directly or indirectly, but most folks dont realize that, or care.
Stay Frosty,
Ed

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Couldn’t agree with any of you any less

Railroads are Dying, and if they are not, they are violation phsical law #3 of the universe which we live in, that states, that everythign will deteriorate over time, and everyhting has. They were usefull in one time period or another, But now, Laying down new track costs a million a mile, litterally. You have the kind of money? Railroads are highly expensive to opperate, And busses are a lot cheaper

For all of those who say Railroads aren’t dying, you’ve either Failed physics or have never taken it.

Although I don’t believe in Darwin’s theory of evolution, The world is evolving, Railraods are going like typewritters.

When i use the term Railroads, I mean Metal wheels, Steal track… i’m Not including the ICE or high speed rail , or the Train in Japan that moves really really fast, which eventually will have an amazing impact on our Economy.

Although I will admit to you that RRs are the best way to ship Goods and merchnadise, What I can say is withing the next 50 to 100 years, the bill for the RR structure upkeep will either be almost unafordable, or send an RR right to bankrupty protection

Laying down RR tracks is like installing a row of 1000 light hulbs, One switch opperates this entire row of light bulbs, hence, All the lighbulbs have the same amount of opperation time, and when 10,000 hours closes in, they will all burn out within a few days of each other.

The same thing is going to ahppen with the RR’s… and i don’t want to sound like one of those sue-sayers or Cleo whatever he name is, But RRs , when things are laid down simoltaniously, the break simoultaniously. Each mile of tracks has ahd roughley the same amount of wear & tear put on it as the mile before that, and the mile befroe that…

So within 50 tom100 years, I have a gut feeling that this sytem, which we have come to know and love, could simoultaniously implode on itself.

Constant repairs…

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Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t the railway industry “re-pave” the entire road, so to speak, when it becomes necessary.

Your post reminded me of the article “The plight of the shortline railroad” Trains, March 2004, pages 30-39

It seems that the Class Ones have been doing a pretty good job of “re-paving” the roads; through the decades railways (particularily the class ones) have been constantly up-grading their rails to keep up with the increasing weight of freight cars. In this case the railroads are not just patching, but in fact replacing the old rails with new ones on a fairly consistant basis, throughout the past centruy. It’s not as if the railroads are still using the same rails and infastructure that they were in the 1900s, with some minor upgrades or “patches” to the rails that have worn down.

But, you point does seem valid towards the smaller class two and three railroads that don’t seem to have the money to be up-grading to the more heavy duty track, necessary to move the more modern 286,000lb cars (soon to be 315,000lb?)

If you havn’t read the aformentioned article already, definately do, it’s a good indicator of the near future to come in railroading.

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For a good lesson in why modern railroads really really want to stay out of the public eye, research your railroad history starting with the construction of the UP up through the USRA in the early 1920’s. They absolutely do not want to repeat any of that.

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…I suppose I’m one who can’t quite figure why a corporation [railroads], continues to prefer to do business in the “dark”. Arrogance seems to be closely associated with railroads since their early beginnings…I’m refering to management end of it all. Just seems to be something about the structure of it all that it has been done this way since the early years [when they were practically a monopoly in transportation], and want that concept to continue and disregard the transportation industry changes that now are in place. I’m one that finds it hard to believe keeping the workings and benefits of their service in absolute secrecy is going to be an advantage for their survival. It is my hope they DO survive…Just don’t understand the position they take to secure that survival.

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I agree that the only ‘people’ railroads are concerned about are the shipper/consignees that furni***he freight and the revenue that keeps them in business and the investors. That being said, railroads do not have broad based investment because they do not do anything to combat the public perception of railroads being a dying rust belt industry, The investment in railroads is controlled by the institutional investors that do not care about the overall health of the industry or of individual propertys they are invested in. They only care about what the bottom line reads THIS QUARTER. That forces rail managment to make short term decisions to bolster the bottom line THIS QUARTER that work to the long term detriment of the industry as a whole and to the detriment of individual companies.

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I noticed that most railroads have been changing to spartan paint schemes to save costs. They just look uglier, today I had a chance to see CSX bright and dark future geeps right next to each other and you can guess what one I liked more.

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One thing I’ve wondered is, are there any younger people who know how to, or have any interest in, driving a steam locomotive? Steam trains still seem to be popular as tourist attractions throughout the world. Heck, look how many theme parks have them running. But whenever I go to, say, Disneyland, even there the engineers on their steam engines mostly seem to be elderly. What’s going to happen when they die? I’ve never met any teenager or college-age person who’s expressed any interests in working a steam engine. Obviously if we want to have steam engines running throughout the world into this new millenium, some people are going to have to “take the throttle”.

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…I believe there is a young group following the interest too…Some years back when we used to get several big steam excursions come into Muncie here there was always plenty of “young” folk around the operation. Units such as 611, 765 etc…

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I agree that most stats on railroads, except the return of the cost of capital show some pretty dymanic growth. I also agree that the railroads have no particular obligation to anyone not a shareholder , employee or user of the service. I think the basic issue being raised is that if people getting an education to get into transportation related careers THINK that railroads are dying, what would one expect to be the perception of the general public. So should I really care? I do not fall in any of the above categories.

What I was suggesting is that IF railroads want changes in public policy to get things such as government funding to help improve the infrastructure, and other changes the may be of benefit to the users and shareholders, then they are going to have to do more than toot their horn at 3:00am at crossings in residential neighborhoods. OK, some things are done. UP’s steam program and operation lifesaver come to mind. On the other hand, if they don’t want help to the tune of a $ Billion for the Chicago rationalization plan or $ 7 or 8 for the for the “help the I 95” plan, let them wrap up the bucks they get and move on.

As Mark H. mentioned, commuter rail has grown and improved dramaticly, but it came because public money-tax dollars-got kicked in to do the job. That didn’t come because a CEO said hey we need a little help here.

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Take the “dying” railroad away. And we will see what else starts to die.