Economics can play apart in directing the decision to modernize.
If the interest on the loan to buy a replacement Diesel is more than the savings from replacing and scraping the old steam locomotive today, you might continue with steam until expenses go up.
Modern track machinery is another example. While it replaces some low cost manual laborers, are those savings enough to pay the high cost skilled mechanic necessary to maintain the machine?

Yes, the entire railroad industry worldwide is notorious for being "conservative" in adopting new technology and strategies, in large part because of the substantial private capital costs usually involved (i.e. "your own" money instead of "somebody else's"). There are, however, examples where technology was changed extremely quickly, relatively speaking--many American railroads were dieselized almost "overnight"; the TGV and Japanese Shinkansen, etc.

But there was no sensible reason for railroads to have retained five-, and even in some cases SIX-man freight crews, with "firemen" and multiple brakemen, decades after automatic air brakes and dieselization. (The real reasons--state laws and the threat of labor union strikes--don't strike me as "sensible.") See also: regulators forcing money-losing passenger trains to continue running.



Does the track machine ever demand Railroad Retirement, sick days, medical care, or Workmen's Comp? Not like you can rent a track gang from a prison anymore........ if, indeed, you ever really could.....

There was a very sensible reason: before the advent of portable radios, relaying hand signals around curves often required multiple men.

Also, do not discount the fact that "many hands make light work", something that has clearly been forgotten in the apparent hellscape that modern railroad employment seems to be.

Trust me:

Bloated crews long postdated radio technology.

The last locals operated by Penn Central, Milwaukee Road, Rock Island, and other lines in 1976-82, long after portable radios were standard, all boasted such crews.

This reminds me of the mentality of putting six locomotives on a short train in hopes that two will still be running by the time it gets to its destination.

This is a great film. I enjoyed it a lot. I do have to ask who the intended target audience was. There wasn't much of a plot and it wasn't particularly instructional. So who did the producers think would or should watch this?

Manual laborers in more recent times get hired off the street after they leave prison, from a population that can't get hired on a large railroad because machinery is used there instead. But track machines require mechanics, who can get hired at large railroads and demand similar wages to work anywhere else. (I'm citing my experience on New Hope & Ivyland RR 40 years ago.)

Can't imagine they'd get away with girlie calendars on the lunchroom wall these days.......

The National Film Board of Canada, founded in 1939 as a propaganda wing of the Canadian Government as World War Two broke out, evolved over time into much the same role as the United States' Public Broadcasting Service: To promote visual arts and programming that are deemed culturally beneficial and significant that would not succeed in a purely for-profit environment. In other words, subsidization of a subset of the humanities. The NFB is primarily noted for documentaries, animated shorts, and projects that promote the preservation of Canadian, Quebecois, and Indigenous cultures.

Perhaps that explains a bit?

Some of my favorite films of all time are NFB Canada productions. But I can't think of a single one that would have "made it" in a normal commercial market.

That such practices lasted as long as they did was due to management basically surrendering to the brotherhoods. However, at the time they were enacted, the full crew laws had at least some basis in worker safety. Consider this, the states that had these laws were mostly in the Midwest, where a significant portion of the rail mileage was single track, dark (unsignaled) territory, dispatched with train orders. As such, as soon as the local stopped to do work, one of those crewmen had to go back and flag, to protect against following extra trains. If they were working against a superior scheduled train and that train was late, if they wanted to get anything done, another man had to walk out ahead to flag. That left ONE man on the ground, and nobody to pass signals. That leaves that man with a choice of being where the engineer can see him, or where he can see what's going on with the head end of the push, but not both. And that's not a good choice to have to make. The railroad's abysmal safety record during the last years of the nineteenth and early years of the twentieth century made such laws popular with the public.

Yes, watching The Railrodder, it is painfully obvious that this is propaganda. Very few actual Canadians are shown as is very little of Canadian cities, in fact you would think that no one even lives in Canada, and that Canadians are just "simple country folk" with "folksy banjos" all over the place.

STAY ASLEEP, don't concern yourself with what's happening in the cities and institutions... go back to your banjos and thinking your better than those rude Americans!

A few years after The Railrodder was made, Canada elected its first communist Prime Minister... so much for "simple country folk", eh?

Of course in the US, you have the United States Information Agency which had a similar purpose. Over the years efforts were made to ensure that USIA material would NOT be pushed on Americans, including in 1985 when a bill was passed to see to it.



Of course the Obama administration reversed that in 2012...

Holy smokes Joe6167, I think you mixed up your posts between RYPN and CGN ;)

On the flip, I grew up in Russell, Ontario along the old NYC line. The right of way between Embrun and Russell is now a bike path, but back 30+ years ago, if you looked hard enough you could still find traces such as rotten ties in the ditches with date nails and the occasional NYC oilcan/fireman's scoop/MOW tool in an old barn. Virtually every farm I worked on had at least one NYC Dietz oil lantern...The Russell, Embrun, Pana and Edwards stations are still around, but re-located and converted to houses. Confusingly, though the Embrun station is remarkably well preserved and virtually unmodified on the exterior, the Edwards station was chosen to be moved, 'restored', re-named Embrun and is on display adjacent to the bike path in said village.

73 RwC

Finch was on a busy main line, so I am not surprised at the employees -- mainly track crew.
Our village was on the double tracked CNR main, with a branch junction and wye. There were two mainline track crews and a crew for the branch.
There was plenty of work to do for those fellows. One job for them was car cleaning. I saw open MOW gondola cars set off that had to be cleaned out, for example. Every switch and yard limit stand had kerosene lamps that required service. Many got shot up with .22s!
The old boys said they were happy to see the end of steam because when heavy freights stopped to set off cars, they often slipped getting started and messed up the rail heads!
There was an interlocking tower at the junction, but before my time. There were crossover switches on the mainline to switch into the branch, where there was also a long passing track. The cross over frogs took a beating.
I remember the passenger station. There were several main line passengers and one each way branch mail into the early 1960s. Also a freight shed and large work building for the section crews.
There were a couple of sidings for the feed mill, coal yard, cattle loading, wheat loading, other farm produce loading, etc.
It was a typical little junction town and a busy spot, even through the 1960s.

Great Western -

Thanks for your comments. Am appreciative of all the work that those railroaders did in those days.

Les

Mr. Beckman,
Thank you. I posted the video because it just represented a better time that resonated with me, and memories I have.
As I said in the opening post, it probably has little to do with RYPN's mandate, although there are always things to learn from past practices.
I knew many of the section men. They were all local fellows and they made a living from the work and raised families who are still in the community. Indeed, the last of these older fellows died about a month ago. He was in his 90s, a life-long employee of CNR, except for the time he spent fighting in Europe in World War II.
Another fellow I knew well, also a Veteran, suffered badly from skin cancer. Near the end, he had lost much of his nose and surrounding skin. From the preservationist point of view, that is a very important lesson to learn when people are out doing track work. Protect yourselves from the sun that will be glaring down on you all day.

This has everything to do with RyPN. Images of the vanished past are records and show us what it looked like. Thanks.