Big UP Layoff
- Thread starter davesnow
- Start date
blueodessey
Well-known member
I have said it before and I'll sat it again, you can't have all your eggs in one basket, years ago, I spoke with certain folks in the Railroad World, better than a decade ago not just this one but other RR Co's too about why Branch lines and small business didn't have a good working Rail System, and was basically told, the vision of the companies is the most basic, Point A to B straight as the Crow Flies. They didn't want all these little tracks to businesses, Intermodal was the wave of the future. And so this is why you see lots of Rails Torn up that used to serve many types of industries who are now served by Big Trucking Firms which tend to Clog our Freeways more now than ever.
And an additional Intermodal Facility was to be built in the Northern Los Angeles County area to take the Strain off Port Trucking off our Freeways and Distribution of Intermodal stuff........ It never happened either, so take a look at how many trucks go up the Grape Vine (5 Freeway) and see what happens to them when our Storms and or Snow White outs close the Grape Vine down! Bet you the Railroad would have no problems getting their loads over the hill.
I spoke with several manufacturing firms, and asked why they were not shipping by Rail... .Guess what the answer was?
Railroad won't serve us anymore, or it's too expensive, or the Track gets broken and can take months to fix Spur lines etc.........
Also Spoke with some unnamed ROW workers and they confirmed the same answer as the Manufacturing Firms.....And will leave it at that.
Now you add to that the California Port Strike that went on for months, and we had several hundred ships sitting off our coast, while longshoreman fought for higher Raises..
https://www.google.com/search?q=Port+Strike+on+Pacific+Coast&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1
And this little Strike struck a raw cord with both Local Companies that couldn't get their Goods and lost tons of money, prices went up for consumers, and now we pay higher prices all the way around.
Granted everyone has the right to Strike, but this one got way out of control, and Washington needed to do a better job, it didn't happen.
It was also whispered that certain Countries said enough is enough, we will not deal with unreliability, so now other places are building Ports to handle the Business we didn't here locally. And our Port will never attain the business they could have had due to internal Labor and Cost problems.
Not to beat a Dead Horse here, but with Coal Mines shut down, and so many other things, I'm not surprised about the layoffs.
There needs to be a change of thought about how Railroads serve local businesses, because what I see now, is lot less Rail Service here than what we used to have, and whole lot more Trucking carrying what was once shipped on the Rail.......I have nothing against the Trucking Industry, they are vital to our Country, but Railroads are not utilizing the capacity they have built up.
I have been watching lots of Tracks unused all over California and other States too, and a lot of Track torn up too, you know what happens when track is torn up, it usually is a death sentence to the Right of Way, and never comes back again, all in the name of Progress, now ask Californians how they like driving on the Freeway.......We have the worst traffic in the nation, and that is disgusting to me.
Sorry about the Rant, but this is the way I see it.............Thank You Sir Dave for sharing..........
They didn't want all these little tracks to businesses, Intermodal was the wave of the future. And so this is why you see lots of Rails Torn up that used to serve many types of industries who are now served by Big Trucking Firms which tend to Clog our Freeways more now than ever.
-snip-
Perhaps that is why I find "little guys" like Carolina Coastal Railway, Indiana Northeastern Railroad, and so many others out there more interesting than the big 7.
*cough* Precision Scheduled Railroading *cough*. 'Scuse me, I think I'm coming down with something.
@1161mac: I also like shortlines better than the big class 1 railroads for several reasons. One of the reasons is that trains go a bit slower than on Class 1's. Some are more scenic than others. They also have a smaller motive power roster, which means it takes a lot less time to make an entire fleet than a large Class 1 railroad. Some of them tend to be more interesting, specifically shortlines running tourist trains, such as the Chattanooga & Chickamauga Railway. However, I also like branchlines for Class 1 railroads for similar reasons.
@1161mac: I also like shortlines better than the big class 1 railroads for several reasons. One of the reasons is that trains go a bit slower than on Class 1's. Some are more scenic than others. They also have a smaller motive power roster, which means it takes a lot less time to make an entire fleet than a large Class 1 railroad. Some of them tend to be more interesting, specifically shortlines running tourist trains, such as the Chattanooga & Chickamauga Railway. However, I also like branchlines for Class 1 railroads for similar reasons.
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Joining GM layoffs and plant shutdowns. Economy is going into a whirl wind, slow down.
Yep. I feel sorry for the young people growing up these days. Things are supposed to be better here in the "future" but seems to me it's getting worse. We are living in an age where things we buy are supposed to be manufactured better and cheaper, yet prices on everything keep going up up UP. The prices for cars and houses these days are outrageous. Restaurant food is getting worse and costs more. The city roads and streets are full of potholes. The highways are busier than ever. The semi trucks keep tearing them up and they're not being repaired. Bridges are failing inspections. Need I go on?
Man do I miss the 60's!!
blueodessey
Well-known member
Evening Sir Dave, and I am right there with ya........
Things have really changed, and I hope some day, maybe this world will get some sense of better direction, we sure are not going the way we should.......:wave: Take care ole friend.!
.Things have really changed, and I hope some day, maybe this world will get some sense of better direction, we sure are not going the way we should.......:wave: Take care ole friend.!
TrainmasterGT
Resident Youtuber
Anyone tired of winning yet?
I prefer the "working" trains myself. Serving a handful of businesses, helping keep people employed and some of the "older" equipment running.
A railroad story.... I have just recently become interested in rail-fanning and one of the locals in this area is the Carolina Coastal Railway. After some research I learned that they rarely use the track closest to me... I found an ex-conductor of the line and we talked about their time table a bit. I learned that when I lived a bit further east Carolina Coastal literally ran 40 yards from my house. My property ran right up to the right of way. Though I found the trains interesting then and reminiscent of my youth (we had rail running through our farm land) I wasn't interested enough to photograph or video the trains. What a missed opportunity! Now I'll probably drive miles and wait for hours what I could have done daily in my own back yard!
cascaderailroad
New member
This has me greatly worried, and it is obviously apparent why this is happeningJoining GM layoffs and plant shutdowns. Economy is going into a whirl wind, slow down.
blueodessey
Well-known member
It's called, over production, market over valued as usual....
Spills over into everything else....... We have been warned several times over the last year by talking head's.....
They didn't want all these little tracks to businesses, Intermodal was the wave of the future. And so this is why you see lots of Rails Torn up that used to serve many types of industries who are now served by Big Trucking Firms which tend to Clog our Freeways more now than ever.
And an additional Intermodal Facility was to be built in the Northern Los Angeles County area to take the Strain off Port Trucking off our Freeways and Distribution of Intermodal stuff........ It never happened either, so take a look at how many trucks go up the Grape Vine (5 Freeway) and see what happens to them when our Storms and or Snow White outs close the Grape Vine down! Bet you the Railroad would have no problems getting their loads over the hill.
I spoke with several manufacturing firms, and asked why they were not shipping by Rail... .Guess what the answer was?
Railroad won't serve us anymore, or it's too expensive, or the Track gets broken and can take months to fix Spur lines etc.........
Also Spoke with some unnamed ROW workers and they confirmed the same answer as the Manufacturing Firms.....And will leave it at that.
Now you add to that the California Port Strike that went on for months, and we had several hundred ships sitting off our coast, while longshoreman fought for higher Raises..
https://www.google.com/search?q=Port+Strike+on+Pacific+Coast&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1
And this little Strike struck a raw cord with both Local Companies that couldn't get their Goods and lost tons of money, prices went up for consumers, and now we pay higher prices all the way around.
Granted everyone has the right to Strike, but this one got way out of control, and Washington needed to do a better job, it didn't happen.
It was also whispered that certain Countries said enough is enough, we will not deal with unreliability, so now other places are building Ports to handle the Business we didn't here locally. And our Port will never attain the business they could have had due to internal Labor and Cost problems.
Not to beat a Dead Horse here, but with Coal Mines shut down, and so many other things, I'm not surprised about the layoffs.
There needs to be a change of thought about how Railroads serve local businesses, because what I see now, is lot less Rail Service here than what we used to have, and whole lot more Trucking carrying what was once shipped on the Rail.......I have nothing against the Trucking Industry, they are vital to our Country, but Railroads are not utilizing the capacity they have built up.
I have been watching lots of Tracks unused all over California and other States too, and a lot of Track torn up too, you know what happens when track is torn up, it usually is a death sentence to the Right of Way, and never comes back again, all in the name of Progress, now ask Californians how they like driving on the Freeway.......We have the worst traffic in the nation, and that is disgusting to me.
Sorry about the Rant, but this is the way I see it.............Thank You Sir Dave for sharing..........
I spoke about a lot of that in my personal marketing plan for one of my business classes. Precision Scheduled Railroading places a higher emphasis on operating ratios and efficiency instead of where the focus should be: on the customers. It's a lot like a certain political belief where it looks great on paper but it's terrible in reality.
Fred Frailey (I believe) did a write-up either on or related to PSR in a recent issue of Trains. Specifically, he was talking about some of the things CN does when faced with longer trains and a lack of infrastructure: they break the train in two, tie it down in two separate sidings, wait for conflicting traffic to clear, then reverse, couple, and continue on. Someone please explain to me how that's anywhere close to efficient.
All these issues are reasons why I want to work in the rail industry...I come from a customer service background. I couldn't imagine leaving a customer cut off from service they need for efficiency's sake. I understand that things happen but...there's a limit.
Someone needs to get it through their head that efficiency doesn't mean jack if you don't have any customers.
CSX came up with a clever solution with running longer trains on the Western & Atlantic Subdivision, specifically at the passing siding in Dalton. If you take a satellite view of Dalton. CSX has two diamonds across the Norfolk Southern tracks: one crossing NS' mainline to access CSX's small yard and another one where the CSX mainline crosses NS' mainline. The yard connects directly to the passing siding that ends south of CSX's mainline crossing with NS' mainline. If the train is too long to fit in the siding, the train will instead be directed across the NS' mainline into the yard and then out of the yard and into the passing siding. This happens at least once a day so the route is able to handle most of the longer trains that are result in the implementation of PSR. That's a pretty clever solution to running PSR on such a historic route.
PSRs though have run into some big problems for both NS, former D&H Sunbury line and others. and also for CSX in New York and New England. The trains run fine as long as they keep moving and are fine on fairly flat ground, but as NS and CPR found out previously, the trains will get stuck on the various hills and in the valleys, and have to be split up.
YouTube guy mbmars001 (I think that's his name) has some nice videos of the action along the Dalton line including some trains really grinding and groaning away as they run along the line down there. At 15,000 Feet, these are massive trains!
I just checked his channel. He videos the CSX's Abbeville Division, which is in South Carolina. Out of the 396 videos on his channel (79 rows of videos with each row having 5 videos, plus one video in the 80th row), there are only twenty in the area I live in: 10 in Austell, Georgia, 4 in Atlanta, 1 on NS' Atlanta North District (which comes thru Dalton), 3 in Chattanooga, 1 following trains from Nickajack Lake to Dalton, and 1 in Dalton, or about 5.05% of all the videos on his site.
cascaderailroad
New member
I think it is akin to the Chevy Vega, the Ford Pinto, and the Corvair ... nobody really wanted them ... useless products
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Such a long and tremendous change for you folk over in America. Here in Gt Britain I haven all America official railway annual book dated from the 1950's. Given to me a while back by someone where who knew I was interested in railways. It is at least over two inches thick and lists every railway company from the giants to wee companies with only a few or several miles. Had thought it should maybe got to someone over there being such a historical thing from way back then. It also includes Canadian, Mexican and Cuba rail. Apart from knowing many of the giants I have been fascinated by all those wee companies now long gone history. Fascinating.
blueodessey
Well-known member
Exactly correct Sir, I also come from several different jobs, 52 yrs worth, both Family and Professional, and one thing I learned if nothing else mattered,
Loc, Loc, Loc, for Real Estate,
Customer is King whether you want to believe it or not....
Word of Mouth can hurt a business into Financial Ruin......
Etc.......My Mantra was Full Respect with Discretion to our Customers, help them solve their issues of Transportation Etc.......OR like it is said, Build a better Mouse Trap and they will come........Have worked with CEO's all the way to the folks pushing the Broom and Digging the Ditches for new Utilities etc........So it comes to Point, if you don't care about them or their needs, they will seek someone that does and will..........Even at a higher costs sometimes......
Then it resolves in a way, once you leave, it is hard or nearly impossible to come back and start over with the Customer.......
So now we see where this has ended up, and it is very painful for me to see how certain things have changed in the Business World.......You would think with all the AI and Computers and Whiz Bang things we have, that certain basic necessities have improved, but alas, they have decayed..........Once such thing, I can think of is JUST IN TIME INVENTORY SYSTEM,
https://smallbusiness.chron.com/advantages-disadvantages-justintime-inventory-21407.html
Look at our Infrastructure in America..........There is absolutely no excess for this........So I wait hoping that maybe things will improve in one of many ways.....I am very pessimistic, but hopefully optimistic the our next generation of new Minds can find a better way thru the Muck that we are currently stuck in...........
I bid you a good Xmas...........
We live in an age where we now have phones and tablets built into car dashboards and the car even drives itself. Are things really that bad?
Masses are not out of work and those that are get help from the government. Layoffs make headlines but we hear little and we don't discuss them as much when there are times of expansion. 100 people get hired. 20 get laid off... we hear about the 20.
The Great Depression was something that could have whipped this country's spirit. But did it?
Improvements to Air, Vessel, and Land transportation have been tremendous. Yet, rail still prospers. Amazing!
Masses are not out of work and those that are get help from the government. Layoffs make headlines but we hear little and we don't discuss them as much when there are times of expansion. 100 people get hired. 20 get laid off... we hear about the 20.
The Great Depression was something that could have whipped this country's spirit. But did it?
Improvements to Air, Vessel, and Land transportation have been tremendous. Yet, rail still prospers. Amazing!