Since Classic Trains is being folded back into the Trains Magazine experience, the artificial 50-year cutoff on discussion subjects will be going away also – a good thing, in my opinion.
Many ‘hot’ development topics from the '70s and '80s are in the realm of nostalgia now, and it might be interesting to see some of the things that were ‘the shape of things to come’.
https://railroads.dot.gov/sites/fra.dot.gov/files/fra_net/18295/dot_11942_DS1.pdf
Deregulation was the biggest one. When the Staggers act finally passed and the railroads were allowed to actually price competitive for their services and abandon money losing lines they turned around. The federal government didn’t know how bad it really was until they created a certain railroad in the northeast callef Conrail. Conrail didn’t make a profit until after the Staggers act was passed. Burlington Northern got overwhelmed with the demands of trying to service all the trains out of the Powder River area. They literally poured almost every dollar they had into getting it fluid. They were buying everything EMD and GE could build in terms of SD40-2 and C30-7s for a bit. Santa Fe showed that speed was something you could sell with the Super C.