Admittedly I took this quote out of context. It is from an article about a rail crossing dispute in Lee County FL - but it is symptomatic of the public relations problem that rail has today.
How would forum members suggest changing this common attitude?
dd
Quit shipping coal to the city where the person said this lives…
One nice cold winter with no lights and heat, or having to pay to try and truck the coal to the power plant…and the archaic railroad would start to look quite modern…
Ed
And who says its limited by where the track goes. We have a large domestic container business traveling by rail and how about those truck trailers traveling everywhere by train. And the previous writer who responded about the coal traveling to the power plants. I don’t see many trucks hauling grain long distance to the ports for overseas shipment. This is almost the exclusive domain of the railroads. Their are not as many freight consolidators as their once were but those still in the business would disagree with the statement about who ships by rail. This is still a very important part of the nations transportation network and I expect will be for years to come.The new regulations regarding hours of service for truckers will certainly over the next five years bring more and more of that type business back to the rails including I suspect some of the long lost perishable business.
The attitude has to be laid in part to the shift away from carload traffic. Used to be you could see the interface between the RR and the public - a car on the team track, a hopper or two at the local coal dealer, boxcars full of lumber at the lumber yard, you name it. Even your Christmas present from Aunt Harriet could be seen as coming via rail on REA.
The public today doesn’t see that interface. The item you bought today at HugeMart passed in front of you at the crossing the other day, but you couldn’t see it inside the container. Your present from Aunt Harriet (bless her soul for still sending you one at her age) came by rail - in a package service trailer.
Re-training the public (pun intended) won’t be easy. Shippers see no reason to advertise that they ship by rail - such an ad makes no money for them. We’ve discussed the railroads’ advertising and why they do so little.
People still refer to trains as “choo choo” even though they haven’t “choo choo’d” in years. Model railroaders and railfans celebrate - steam. (I know, I run ‘diesels’ on my model RR, too) Trains are passe - old technology. It’s gonna be hard to change that image and mindset.
I know for a Fact the Coors brewary in Memphis TN recives all of there water via train in tank cars the recive on avarage 35 a day. The reason I know this is I used to haul the finished product out of there and while waiting to load would see the BNSF bring cuts of tankers marked CORX into the brewary. One time I asked the train crew what was in those same cars and was told all it is is rocky mountain spring water.
…My opinion of the above statement “Who ships by rail today”…is really real in the public’s mind…even goes beyond that…Probably could say…“Who runs trains anymore”…I for one don’t know how one would fix that perception but I am one who thinks it would be benificial to overall rail business…if it was “fixed”…I don’t have the answer but that’s just my opinion.
Actually the rails probably ship more tonnage today than they did in their “heyday”…Don’t have the facts in front of me at the moment but that’s my thought…
dd:
(1) The circle jerks in Lee County made that ludicrous statement to support their own narrow minded attempt to cut service to a shipper so they could improve a street crossing without paying to replace a railroad crossing and related signaling. (Mookie can point you to some fellow near-sighted boobs that need removed from the gene pool.)
(2) Many industries keep rail sidings for the sole purpose of negotiating rates with the truckers (rail service as a rate alternative bargaining chip). After years of no service, the railroads remove the track & switches they own to decrease tax and maintenance costs. The industry starts to whine to the local PUC or the STB and then finds out that the railroad was justified and they were just plain stupid.
(3) Every time the diesel fuel prices jump appreciably, rail service suddenly looks VERY attractive. (Silver lining for me every time I have to pay more at the pumps)[X-)][X-)][X-)]
I friend of mine once said that RRs were becoming like water and sewer systems. Nobody has a clue about how they work or that they’re even there until they break.
RRs have just faded from public view over the past 100 years.
I did a presentation for my kids elementary classes. I showed them slides about the RR history and then asked them if they or their parents ever used RR’s. I then showed them pictures of fast food chain french fries, soda, automobiles, a light switch, and a Nintendo game system and then showed them the RR cars that haul the frozen spuds, a corn syrup tank, a tri-level, a coal car and a stack car, so they know they use RR’s in an indirect way.
Dave H.
…That sounds like a good approach to enlighten the next generation of workers and managers that the RR’s are still here to do the job…
At a meat plant in Liberal Kansas I have to negotiate a forest of railcars. In some areas of Baltimore I have to compete with the Canton Railroad serving the same industry I would be loading or delivering to.
At a newspaper plant I walked across a boxcar waiting to be loaded INSIDE the building before I realized it, have to be careful about those things.
I used to haul stone (gravel) out of a rail served plant. IF you did not have this facility… the entire regional economy on which concrete and apshalt was based on would not exist.
Need another 19 ton of stone please.
You can bet that man is also calling for sand to go with that stone at any ready mix plant. They had sand too by rail.
Here in Arkansas they quarry the rock and sand. Most of it is trucked but anything out of state probably goes by rail.
Dont forget the salt. That table salt out of New York State is probably by rail on the Genesee.
Seems like everywhere a train goes a trucker trips over the rails.
It may not have been touched by a railroad but wherever you live you can bet a trucker brought it to you.
I just had a similar thing said to me by a person I work with the other day. I explained to them how much money they have spent in the L.A., CA Port for ship to rail cargo movement, and how huge that is. They seemed genuinely surprised.
The majority of people in the US have absolutely no idea how anything works. They live in ignorant bliss, knowing nothing about how they get electricity, water, gas, food, clothing… All they know is they turn on a light and it works, and if they need something, they go to the store and buy it. I’m not sure how you would change that, unless you tie people down and force them to watch the Discovery channel for two hours a day. 
Then of course you have kids who actually admire and emulate people like Paris Hilton, who doesn’t even know what Walmart or a Funeral Home is… Scary.
Dave
-DPD Productions - Home of the TrainTenna RR Monitoring Antenna-
http://eje.railfan.net/dpdp/
Seems to me that the upside of a railroad PR campaign that emphasized how rail moves much of what we consume would be local support for railroads instead of the uninformed bad mouthing that is becoming so common. That support translates into local support of railroad improvement projects (such as the cross in Florida).
dd
Diesel trucks fry too much. That’s why trucks go up a runaway on a steep
downgrade. Diesel trains DONT have that problem! "And this is comming from a
steam fan ! "
I know I’ve stood on the soap box a few times and given the coal & electricity speech.
I think the RRs should do more tv spots and ad campaigns that focus on how the fit in to the economy. UP and NS seem to have stated down the right path, but there is no follow throughas of yet. I can see it now: “BNSF, we don’t make the things you buy, we deliver what they’re made of!”
dehusman is on the right track (no pun intended)!
Last time I looked, eighteen wheel trucks can’t go accross deserts, mountains, rivers, etc. without roads, so where is the difference…tracks, good roads, no difference. We need both railroads and truck lines with the proper use of each in a balance.
That statement tells me several things about this person or persons.
1/ They know jack $%#$ about anything having to do with rail for starters.
2/ They are using rail as a scape-goat for their own agenda and not considering others. A typical selfish response from someone who obviously has nothing better to do than complain and engage in negative smearing likely.
3/ They are probably stupid and don’t are are incapable of using logic. Any intelligent person who has read studies or for that matter looked at the roads can tell you that trucks cause increase wear on the roads and so having a rail user will reduce costs to the taxpayer. It is also more space efficient to have a single track line go through town then a double or quadruple lane road for truck use. It is even better because unlike a road, the rail upkeep is up to the railroad and not average Joe-taxpayer. The more roads you have and more trucks using existing road, add to maintainance cost and also decrease amount of land available for development.
4/ Trucks are archaic, they only carry one or two loads per 28 to 57 feet in length. The only reason why they exist still is because sometimes they are cheaper, easier and quicker then rail but not always. They certainly don’t do wonders for industries that requires large quantities or bulk commodities either for importing or exporting.
I wi***he government would undertake in a rail awearness program for basic understanding of the railroad. They do it for safety (Operation Lifesaver) why don’t they do so people would be more educated and informed about the benefits of a railroad?
Are others seeing a big decline in piggyback service lately?
I use to see a lot of piggyback trailers on an intermodal train (CN mainline from Toronto to Port Huron/ USA).
I can not recall the last time I saw any piggybacks. There use to be a few Triple Crown trains, but that has come and gone, and this forum has already discussed that issue.
I agree with a previous comment made here, that as driver hours get reduced, it may boost the piggyback service.
To quote my favorite line “dat boya might be retaarded”
Adrianspeeder
Wanna bet?? A big old Diamond Reo with the walking beams probably is capable of getting to the logging road with a load where there aint no roads.
You need to consider ground pressure per inch and the solidity of the ground.
I have gone off road many times in a 18 wheeler. Thank god for the ground clearence and the really low gear ratios (and dry weather too)