Another one of our bought and paid for shills looking to rehash the ICC...

http://www.reuters.com/article/idCAN151 ... 915?rpc=44

The real irony is that this is the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Staggers Act. Trains had a good article on the importance of the Staggers Act in its most recent issue.

So there is one industry that is not hurting as bad in this recession, and our government wants to bring them down to the level as all the others?

Rockefeller's family has a long tradition of manipulating the rail industry's freight rates dating back to the Standard Oil days.

Well, better than Sen. Kohl who wants to avoid the intermediate steps of decline and deferred maintenance - he just wants to nationalize them! Hey didn't the AAR used to have photos with the name America's Railroads airbrushed on? Maybe they knew something back then!

Friends,

Just a reminder that this is not the place of political ranting. They will be deleted.

Tom Gears
Moderator

The State of Georgia did a study of these newfangled railroad things back about 1845 - and determined that while some lines could be built and capitalized by private interests with every opportunity of recovering capitalization in a reasonable time frame through revenues, other lines would require public sector subisdy but were worth subsidizing to get them built, and expand the business of the state as a whole.

Highways and air facilities are publicly built and subsidized. Railways in the UK are largely nationalized apart from some private preservation lines - maybe something industrial too, not sure....but the "big" railroads are national. Air carriers, truckers ands railway operators pay to use the publicly owned infrastructure.

We gave ROW to private industry to get lines built in order to expand the frontier and move it ever further west, and make our country a country. There is no longer a frontier that nees to be exploited and populated - we have immigration laws based on frontier population still on the books.

What we now consider "unfair" trade practices lead to regulation. Technological advances in competing transportation modes lead to the necessity for deregulation.

Neither way - public or private - is in and of itself the only good idea. You use what you need to deal with what is required now under these specific circumstances. The only thing you can be sure of is that as time goes on, circumstances will change, and you must be willing to adapt, and the smart money is in making the best of the circumstances as they evolve.

Our health care industry is based on strong labor supporting union members in keeping insurance comprehensive and affordable. Unions and labor aren't what they were in 1950. Canada and Australia and many other developed countries chose nationalized health care tied to tax support. Personally, I don't care whether I pay insurance premiums or taxes, both come from my wallet, but I just want to know it's there when I need it. Insurance executives are no more enlightened about patient needs than government bureaucrats, they want to maximize profits or perpetuate their own existance.

Our political and legal systems are based on fighting over trivia rather than pursuing common goals and trying to achieve something like justice or finding a truth.

We get what we deserve - what do we want to deserve?

dave

Not sure what this thread has to do with preservation. Looks like another opportunity for those with an axe to grind to do so.

I dispute the notion that politics are not directly related to preservation and the railroad industry. I just picked up the latest copy of Progressive Railroading, and by the time I got half way through it there were at least three major rail issues that mainly involved the government taking action or not taking action. Many short lines are going to start deferring maintenance on their lines due to the expiration of a tax credit. Does your tourist operation operate over a host freight railroad that may be looking in the future to downgrade the track you run on due to this tax credit? Thats politics and it directly affects You and your operation.

We can continue to ignore the implications of politics on rail preservation at our own peril. We do not exist in isolation to political decisions, and our 501 c 3 tax exempt status' do not exempt us from the rules and regulations handed down from Washington.

I for one would not object to the occasional discussion about political decisions, policies and regulations and how they affect the railroad and rail preservation industries. If not here, where else am I going to get good analysis of those issues?

Some railroads really do put the screws to captive shippers or receivers of bulk commodities. Airlines do it too in some ways. Not sure what the fair answer should be. Naturally we don't want a return to the bad old days. But maybe there should be some limits. Remember what situations created the need for regulation in the first place. Most of that is gone now because there are competitive options. But for some bulk stuff there isn't. Perhaps the mere threat of re-regulation will cause railroads be less extreme in pricing differentials between competitive and non-competitive situations and that will be enough that no real regulation is needed.

Steve

Not sure what this thread has to do with preservation. Looks like another opportunity for those with an axe to grind to do so.

And I'm not sure how you can't understand, so...

Any reasonably curious preservation advocate wants to understand more than just the machine, because failing to impart the importance of the railroad means you have no chance to convince the public that "choo-choo" in the park is worth something, now that it has no intrinsic value. How many threads on here have wondered why so much of the general public thinks we are just curious little wankers with some overgrown obsession-its because they don't understand why preservation matters.

Now I realize that some people favor discourse with all the milquetoast niceties of an eight-grade cotillion, still others think anything beyond pure mechanics is boring, but no preservation effort (operating or otherwise) is anything but bigger kids with bigger toys, unless it elucidates the past and informs judgments about the future.

No preservation effort can be properly interpreted apart from the history of the operating environment. I almost laugh when I hear people lamenting the failure of Class 1's to host public excursions. Its sad that people can be into something and not understand the constraints that prevent that from happening..

That operating environment includes rather invasive and stupid federal regulation, well chronicled by Albro Martin, et al. Ignoring the events that caused the strangulation of the American railroads means ambitious politicians will again gin up resentment for their own ambitions.

I challenge anyone to tell me how the history of the railroad can be divorced from actions and ideas of Henry Carter Adams, Theodore Roosevelt, Felix Frankfurter, The Interstate Commerce Act, The Hepburn Act. We all know the pablum fed to us in High School about the "Robber Barons", but there's no balance in that meme, or accountability for the legacy of politicians who enacted law after law that crippled a vital resource of the country.

Da** right, I have an axe to grind, three in fact. Stockholder, enthusiast and citizen. I stand with Santayana, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it".

So here we are just 15 years after a Democrat President and a Republican Congress agreed that the ICC had outlived its usefulness (how many federal agencies ever get sent to the dustbin, no matter how poorly they perform, so this must have been pretty clear, huh?) and there are voices calling to resurrect a new monster?

I have to agree in general with Superheater. While this board or any 501 3c needs to avoid promoting a political agenda, discussion of the politics that have shaped rr history and influence our preservation activities today seems very appropriate as long as we keep it civil. For example not long ago I read a book on CN history. Perhaps never was a railroad built and operated that was more shaped by politics at any point in it's history at least up to privitization than CN. Someone more with more knowledge might refute this. Today what are the political forces/realities that impede our restoration efforts?

While this board or any 501 3c needs to avoid promoting a political agenda, discussion of the politics that have shaped rr history and influence our preservation activities today seems very appropriate as long as we keep it civil.

I hate to disagree with somebody who agrees with me, but there IS NO prohibition on discussing politics by 501c3's, even by its Board or Officers. Posters are the equivalent of passersby, not in any way a part of the corporation.

The requirement is that the organization does not involve itself in elections (ever) and does not engage in lobbying, except insubstantially. See below Treasury Regulations, the official IRS interpretation of the Internal Rev Code.

http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&rgn=div8&view=text&node=26:7.0.1.1.1.0.1.3&idno=26

This is why politics must be discussed. Too much misinformation!

Gee whiz, Superheater, put on the injector and cool that boiler down! You got three of your four safeties open!

Brain cell tickling going on--I was in the New River Gorge, photographing the station at Cotton Hill, and a trackworker (CSX) offered me some good, cold water, which tasted mighty good on that hot day. I still smile at the memory, as he said water was "the most underated drink in the world." How true. . .

I know where you are coming from, and your comment about how the story of regulation is an integral part of railroading is certainly something we should somehow include, despite what some would consider rather boring material compared with a live 4-8-4 or even a narrow-gauge Shay. But I have to agree, at least to a point, with Dave and Filmteknik. Let's admit it, railroaders, politicians, and we are human beings like everyone else, and have all the potential virtues and faults that implies. The faults do include greed and laziness, with their close cousin, sloppiness. In this regard, we have to ask ourselves, would we, as a profession, be better off without a boiler code? Would we (and the freight industry) be better off without the FRA inspection and repair standards? How many of us, under the pressures of time and budget, would just let things slide one more day, until we waited one day too long? Heck, it sometimes happens even now, but how much worse might things be without some enforeced guidelines?

Now, Superheater's comments are really directed at rates and other business decisions as opposed to the mechanical stuff, but again, as suggested by both Dave and Filmteknik, maybe there is something to the cases of the coal industry and the chemical industry. Why do I think this might--I say, might--be so? Because I think the people who run such a business usually have their hands full with the business, and would just as soon not spend time and money on lawyers to fight cases against what should be a partner in their distribution chain. Now, I said the case "might" have merit because I also recognise the managers of these businesses are also just as likely to be looking for a way to cut costs and thus improve thier bonuses, but there is still the real possibility (and the real history) of a railroad having a monopoly (and a railroad is, because of its enormous capital requirements, a "natural" monopoly, especially in the days before trucking), and such a monopoly can be difficult and expensive to break. There is also the possibility of excessive competion, in which everyone cuts everyone else's throats and nobody makes money; you can wipe out a lot of investors that way.

I've commented about this before, in reference to management people who become overly concerned about money. I do think a lot of this ill-will can be short-circuited with proper good will, i.e., treating people with respect, considering them more important than money. (Properly applied, such an approach can make you more money!)

What might be the textbook example of this was the decision and action of the Baltimore & Ohio to suspend passenger service on its Royal Blue routing in the late 1950s. This was a decision to end operation of an entire service of mulitiple trains on the line from Baltimore to New York (Jersey City). The railroad made its case with what amounted to a consderable public relations effort, and got a lot of sympathy, and was able to take the service off without the bulk of the acrimony that usually accompanied such a move. They were able to do this because they had always run a good service, and because even in the service-ending arguments, they treated the people of the communities with respect. This is only too rare today, and in fact was rare even then.

Of course, sometimes this still doesn't work, and you have to try something else. For now, we'll consider the case of the chemical man or the coal man who has a problem with his railroad. We'll assume trucking doesn't work too well (that's why he's shipping by rail), he is at a severe competitive disadvantage because of the rate difficulty, and may have service problems to boot because a middle manager figures this guy is captive. Let's assume there is no ICC. What course of action might you recommend? In addition to this, are there any actions he might take (such as building a spur or even a full-blown shortline to connect with another road) that would be enhanced or limited by other conditons, such as another railroad being close by, but without a working interchange point in the vicinity?

It seems to me that over the past couple of years the government has pulled out the throttle on new regulation and laws, and is doing so without attempting to understand the ramifications of such new rules and lawmaking. Once these laws are on the books it is extremely difficult to get them removed, and after a period of time they are accepted as a cost of doing business.

One unintended consequence (this is what happens when you don't read the legislation that you vote on) is the new IRS form 1099 requirement. Have you heard of this one? If your business spends more than $600 with a single vendor in a year that vendor must now receive a 1099 from you, as we as the IRS. So now you'll have to look back through all of your receipts, and tally up every dime that you spent with every vendor that you have. Its not just for large items such as that 1200 gallon tank of diesel bought for old 97, but also for smaller purchases such as buying 15 gallons of gas for the company truck at a time throughout the year from the same station. Is there a true, legitimate purpose for this new requirement? Certainly not. It was the brainchild of one legislator, who rode the wave of "you have the vote on the bill to know whats in the bill" to get this snuck through and now EVERYONE is being penalized by it.

Fortunately there is an effort to have that repealed, as it is clearly a "bridge too far". Personally I am placing my hopes on the multi state lawsuit against the entire Obamacare act, since should any one part of the act be declared unconsitutional the entire act would be subject to repeal. That same "vote now, read later" mentality also resulted in the omission of a severability clause!

We as a citizenry cannot be complacent to blindly follow the government's lead, or we will find that the activities and freedoms that we enjoy today may be gone forever tomorrow, never to return. The price of liberty is constant vigilance. Pay attention and question everything!

A large segment of our industry that "added value", that produced finished products from raw materials while realizing a profit that was spent and reinvested to grow the economy, is already gone. All you have to do is ride the M&E line of NJ Transit and take a look at all the trashed and graffiti covered remains of large factories along the line to see that. The loss of these industries has had an effect on our ability to pull out of recessions (or the current depression, as much of the European media is calling it). It has of course also had an effect on the railroad industry, ride on NJ Transit, Metro North, ConnDot, or MBTA and see how many sidings are left along their lines.

I don't know how many of our politicians ride the train, probably most of them plant their pampered posteriors in a luxury limousine, but whatever mode of transport they use, they need to start looking out the windows. US industry looks pretty sick. Taking a look at both sides of I-280 through Newark, Harrison, and Kearny New Jersey is a place to start.

The US has dug its own hole, it is up to us to climb out of it. We won't get that accomplished by selling each other appliances, hardware and toys built in China.

PC