The Trains Newswire this week reports a law suit by the Shoshone indians to recover profits from the 1860’s land grants awarded to the Union Pacific and other companies. After all the threads regarding licensing the UP’s and acquired rail roads’ image from the modeling industry, there appears to be another side of the coin. Big doings in the Federal Court in Las Vegas. Who do we root for in this one, the cowboys, or the indians?[?]
Will
And the winner is…
i’m just funning here so please nobody get upset…
isn’t it interesting that native americans always say the land doesn’t belong to anyone , until somebody tells them they can make a lot of money selling it ?
all kidding aside , the indians did get totally screwed by the whites . hopefully they’ll get something back with this
They must be looking at the C&NW line in Wyoming, west from Casper to Lander, which has been abandoned for years.
I’m modeling some of that area on my layout - I lived in Lander for a year.
Maybe they can build a casino on it and then UP can run passenger train service to it[:D]
Win,win!
However, in the true spirit of all this logic, and by extension, I hope the last white person in the USA turns out the lights when the deed to the nation is handed over the first people who ever lived there…whoever they were.
I know the first person who lived here. It was my old NCOIC… he named it “dirt”. Before that, it was just called “dusty brown stuff”…
What would Andrew Jackson think?[:-,]
yep
Maybe they can build a casino on it and then UP can run passenger train service to it[:D]
Win,win!
[/quote]
Sorry to be pedantic but doesn’t Amtrak operate all passenger services in the usa?
I got to root for UP on this one. Everyone who made money off the initial land grants is now dead and has no connection to the current UP shareholders. Forcing the current UP shareholders (who paid full value when they bought their shares) to compensate for the alleged “misdeeds” of UP in the 1860s is completely unfair.
Personally I say let the injine’s build all the casino’s they want. I dont gamble and I firmly believe only fools gamble, so as long as the idiots show up to essentially throw money into the street, I’ll laugh at it and just remind myself it really is a sort of poetic justice, the ghosts of the white settler who stole the native american’s land, now have to watch their stupid descendants pay them back via a slot machine handle. Hahaha. A pretty good definition of the term “Irony” if I ever saw one!
Same here, “all is forgivin if enough cash is given” UP and Uncle Sam might have to make the Eagle scream mightily to wiggle out of this one! heheheee.
PS did you here about the guy sueing a casino because they didnt stop him from gambling away his life’s savings on slot machines? Yep, something like $1.5M ! What an idiot! Too Stupid to stop pulling that $%#@ handle after the first $50 bucks.
root for whoever you want, the indians will lose. because the best and brightest were killed off over 100 years ago, and their numbers are minimal; they are not a significant political force. the u.s. government doesn’t treat them much different than they ever did.
this; and the fact they demand too much in these lawsuits, they won’t be taken seriously.
they’d be better off going for one square mile at a time.
the last shoshone tribe living on their native lands (death valley) were ejected to build a golf course, they returned to the edge of the grass and are about to be relocated as soon as the government can find a place to put them (nobody wants them).
nothing has really changed. it’ll be fun watching the indians annoying the union pacific though. that also is traditional.
I’m fed up with the whole “I hate UP” thing… UP, BNSF, NS, etc are here to stay no matter what their pasts are, how unfair they are and all that jazz. None of the actual railroads are of any concern to me because I only run little scale model representatives of them. Once in a while I might take notice of the way the actual locos and the latest rolling stock looks to use as a referance in modeling, but that’s all. Sorry if I seem steamed, but like I said, I’m sick of the whole UP issue…
As for native Americans. I feel they were done totally wrong and still are…
Tracklayer
Well I don’t really have an opinion, while I do think it was wrong that we treated the Native American’s so badly. I don’t think a frivoulous law suit is going to fix anything.
With that in mind, maby this will knock some sence into UP, I think its retarded that UP continuse to chase after Modelers to try to make them pay them royalties for using UP and there fallen flags logo’s(you don’t see BNSF, NS, and CP doing it), wich is pretty sad considering after they merge with a railroad they do every thing to erase that railroad, like how when they bought SP how they basicly took every thing and Repainted, they even repainted the old SP daylight 4-8-4 #4449. Now they want companies like Athearn, atlas ect. to pay to use those names.
I mean after all were modelers not freakin railroads for cryin out loud.
I just hope that UP will stop suing every one and there freakin mother about so i can once again continue to be a UP fan without supporting Big Buisness Sycotism.
Im not trying to affend any one, after all i am a UP fan, but i just had to say this, they can’t get away with this kind of stuff.
Sounds like the Karma Chicken has come home to roost[}:)]
Perhaps a “bean counter” (i.e. accountant) will sit down and weigh the revenue gained against the legal costs, and make a sound recommendation.
No, that would make sense that even a business school grad could not cypher!
Will