[AT] Rail cars.

[CEE VILL]

It is my recollection from childhood when the railroads were strong that:

A lot of contention  existed between the rail companies and the unions over crew size.  Unions still would not give up the coal man (fireman?) position on trains in spite of steam engines being gone.  Even with a coal man, I seem to recall an entire freight train ran with a three man grew.  The companies wanted it to be two. This was probably a pretty small chip in the big poker game.  

My recollection from conversations I heard boiled down to typical corporate greed.   For many of the good railroad years, the rail companies moved much of the profit to other places and did not invest back into their own systems.  Lines became poorly maintained and derailments occurred too often.  Advances in methods did not happen to keep the systems current with the times. Delivery times were greatly extended and not reliable. Meanwhile, the trucks kept rolling, and getting bigger and better. The rail system reached a point of no return.  I think the only reason the remaining system survived is because of U.S government bailout dollars poured in to save part of a vital system.  In a nutshell, greed and mismanagement. How many times and in how many industries have we seen this same situation??

Charlie



> From: pwaugh at embarqmail.com
> To: at at lists.antique-tractor.com
> Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2008 23:09:43 -0500
> Subject: Re: [AT] Rail cars.
> 
> So why did they go away??? ... Labor too high??? .. they have darn good 
> retirement (RR)
> 
> Paul Waugh
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Irma Brown" <bellville1 at gmail.com>
> To: "Antique tractor email discussion group" <at at lists.antique-tractor.com>
> Sent: Friday, February 22, 2008 10:53 PM
> Subject: [AT] Rail cars.
> 
> 
> >I sure do agree with the fact it would e wise to get the rail cars back to
> > hauling freight and cut down the trucks that are running. . It seems that 
> > in
> > our country as soon as we get something that works we have to up and 
> > change
> > it. Sometimes not for the better. Just my two cents.
> >
> > Irma
> > Western, KY
> > http://picasaweb.google.com/bellville1
> > http://members.tripod.com/~DairyGoats/index.html
> > _______________________________________________
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