In the August issue, the term “Super Railroad” is used as a qualifying term, in the context of not every railroad is like (a few were named) “The NS former Wabash line between Detroit and Decatur Ill.”…What criteria is used in this determination?
good question…probably depends on whom you ask… surveys of these groups would say different things: trains mag, wall street journal, the utu, the ble, amtrak pass. feedback, shippers, neighbors on the r-o-w, the epa, the sec, the federal court of appeals, lending inst…
what do you think is a super r.r.?
trains guide had the super seven railroads Sf sp up bn ns csx and conrail.but as cabforward said some shippers with the mergers don’t think the new railroads are super at all.
joe
joe,
your post is the first i have read that used my name since the new forum opened… thanks for speaking of me cordially…
Aw Cab - you know I have always been very nice to you. I am not sure I always follow you in your thinking, but at least you provide some good reading.
Jen
thank you, mookie(?) for your kind words in the past and present, but your reference is the second i’ve read, and joe’s was the first…
I have no earthly idea, I just suspected it might be an evaluatory expression based upon fixed criteria, based upon volumns, buisness model, “franchise” or what have you…,just curious
This could refer to John W. Barriger III’s treatise on Super Railroads, written back in the 1940s, if I remember correctly. He was going to make a Super Railroad out of the Monon, and later the P&LE. It had to do with a railroad built to very high standards, with easy grades and curves, and few crossings (either road or rail).
(Barriger, by the way, was president of both of these railroads…the idea of making a “super railroad” out of the Monon may make him sound like a crackpot, but he most assuredly was not that.)
By that definition, the closest we come to a “Super Railroad” in the U.S. is the Northeast Corridor. The former Wabash line mentioned before has potential in that it’s a straight shot and avoids Chicago. UP’s Overland route has traffic density to make it a super railroad, but there are many “feet of clay”, to mix my metaphors a bit.
I’d also nominate the old Santa Fe east of Kansas City.
A super railroad… hmph…
could it be a railroad with excellent customer or consumer feed back?
Darned if I know, it was a case of pretty shabby journalism.
The term was used in comparing Railroad x with railroad y as in “railroad y is not a SUPERRAILROAD as is railroad x”, but then does nothing to distinguish points of any seeming relevance
He could have been talking in a diminutive frame of referance for all I know, as in Supermans achilles heel “kryptonite”…
Oh, it had good grammer, good spelling, the language even had a good “cheery” flow to it, any English Lit prof would have been proud of, but, in substance didn’t communicate a darned thing of meaning to me. In other words: “hollow” text, or so it seems
In the August issue, the term “Super Railroad” is used as a qualifying term, in the context of not every railroad is like (a few were named) “The NS former Wabash line between Detroit and Decatur Ill.”…What criteria is used in this determination?
good question…probably depends on whom you ask… surveys of these groups would say different things: trains mag, wall street journal, the utu, the ble, amtrak pass. feedback, shippers, neighbors on the r-o-w, the epa, the sec, the federal court of appeals, lending inst…
what do you think is a super r.r.?
trains guide had the super seven railroads Sf sp up bn ns csx and conrail.but as cabforward said some shippers with the mergers don’t think the new railroads are super at all.
joe
joe,
your post is the first i have read that used my name since the new forum opened… thanks for speaking of me cordially…
Aw Cab - you know I have always been very nice to you. I am not sure I always follow you in your thinking, but at least you provide some good reading.
Jen
thank you, mookie(?) for your kind words in the past and present, but your reference is the second i’ve read, and joe’s was the first…
I have no earthly idea, I just suspected it might be an evaluatory expression based upon fixed criteria, based upon volumns, buisness model, “franchise” or what have you…,just curious
This could refer to John W. Barriger III’s treatise on Super Railroads, written back in the 1940s, if I remember correctly. He was going to make a Super Railroad out of the Monon, and later the P&LE. It had to do with a railroad built to very high standards, with easy grades and curves, and few crossings (either road or rail).
(Barriger, by the way, was president of both of these railroads…the idea of making a “super railroad” out of the Monon may make him sound like a crackpot, but he most assuredly was not that.)
By that definition, the closest we come to a “Super Railroad” in the U.S. is the Northeast Corridor. The former Wabash line mentioned before has potential in that it’s a straight shot and avoids Chicago. UP’s Overland route has traffic density to make it a super railroad, but there are many “feet of clay”, to mix my metaphors a bit.
I’d also nominate the old Santa Fe east of Kansas City.
A super railroad… hmph…
could it be a railroad with excellent customer or consumer feed back?
Darned if I know, it was a case of pretty shabby journalism.
The term was used in comparing Railroad x with railroad y as in “railroad y is not a SUPERRAILROAD as is railroad x”, but then does nothing to distinguish points of any seeming relevance
He could have been talking in a diminutive frame of referance for all I know, as in Supermans achilles heel “kryptonite”…
Oh, it had good grammer, good spelling, the language even had a good “cheery” flow to it, any English Lit prof would have been proud of, but, in substance didn’t communicate a darned thing of meaning to me. In other words: “hollow” text, or so it seems