How not to run a railroad.

JCitron

Trainzing since 12-2003
Trains sitting for days at Portland - RAILROAD.NET

Reading the posts in this thread, surely shows how not to run a railroad.

Guilford aka Pan Am never ran the railroad well and definitely went through great lengths to destroy the railroad infrastructure and discourage customers. In addition to that, the crew also went through great lengths to work hard to hardly work at the job they were hired to do. There are incidents such as deliberately delaying a train to work off the hours sitting around or going for a pizza, taking 45-minute lunches and calling in bad equipment, track, or deliberately blocking movements so that no one can do anything. In some ways it seems, they act much like our very own AI drivers/

With the upcoming merger and acquisition of PAN AM Railways by CSX, crew members have been quitting because they don't want to be supervised and actually do the work they were hired to do.
 
lol at the idea an American Class I is somehow going to save how PAR was.

A 45 minute lunch? What a war crime! I can't wait to see CSX employee's working conditions in 2-3 years when they too, lose all their sick leave entitlements and are expected to work like slaves.
 
When I think of lunch on the railroad, I think of the crew getting off at a siding and heading to the local fast food restaurant and grabbing a couple burgers, a shake and some fries before heading back to the locomotive to enjoy their meal while they're waiting for the opposing train.
 
lol at the idea an American Class I is somehow going to save how PAR was.

A 45 minute lunch? What a war crime! I can't wait to see CSX employee's working conditions in 2-3 years when they too, lose all their sick leave entitlements and are expected to work like slaves.

CSX has rules just like any company. They need to move products and goods from one place to another and not have crews faff around. They pay pretty well too compared to what PAR pays with freight conductors starting at $78K per year. Yes, that's starting salary. They have the usual paid sick leave, vacations, and other benefits such as tuition reimbursement and training.

What this shows is people taking advantage of a situation and this is indeed criminal. In all my working years, I never did any of this at my job. We respected the positions we were in whether it was working at an hourly rate assembling and testing products, or later on when on salary. We had our company rules and we worked by them. What these employees did was criminal, and they shouldn't be working there in the first place.

Pan Am Railways sadly is the result of a company setup to rake as much as the organisation can from the infrastructure without putting back anything into it. Timothy Mellon, yes Mellon as in Mellon Bank, bought the B&M, MEC, and later D&H for mere peanuts in the mid-1980s and the railroads for him were a tax write-off. The company was called Guilford Transportation Industries because David Fink came from Guilford, CT. When Guilford Transportation bought the B&M, MEC, and D&H in the 1980s, all three lines were profitable. They all had survived the recession in the 1970s and the B&M and D&H were out of bankruptcy and were doing quite well after trimming lines and acquiring others with the B&M gaining Conrail lines in CT and Western Mass. The MEC was always profitable and ran a tight ship. Yes, the industry base was changing if not dying, but the railroads adapted to the changes and did things as they needed.

David Fink Sr. was brought in to run the system to the ground just like the Penn Central where he and his team came from. Guilford busted unions, cut maintenance, cut crews, abandoned lines, and went as far as to discourage business on most branches while barely maintaining the mainlines outside of the commuter territories in Boston. There were and probably still are standing derailments in the Lawrence, Mass. yard. I used to talk to the crews down there, the old B&M employees and they told me and showed me where these occurred. Prior to Guilford hacking the system, they told me to hire on and I almost did. I even got a cook's tour by the RR police on site there. Later on, the feelings among the crew wasn't the same any longer as they showed me the results of the derailments with spilled grain, sand, and blocks of wood left on the ground. The rails had actually turned over due to lack of ballast under them.

Speaking of maintenance. Locomotives not starting, dying enroute, and running out of fuel is a common problem on the railroad. Yes, running out of fuel and this is still a common problem today. I saw this play out over time. In the 1980s, the B&M had a large fleet of GP40s, it had acquired new in the 1970s as part of its reorganization program along with some still running Alco switchers. The MEC had its selection of U-Boats, Geeps, mostly U25Bs and some Alcos, and the D&H had much the same including some newly purchased former Lehigh Valley C420s. By the time Guilford got done, all of these engines disappeared except for some GP40s and GP38s with many of those barely running. Eventually, they caved and bought some used GP40-2s, and some SD-38s. Recently, they had to cave again and got some CSX-8s. Those by the way are dying one by one. I saw quite a few of those with burn marks on them already.

After draining the system dry, the D&H was thrown into bankruptcy immediately in the mid-80s just after it was merged in. Guilford Transportation, the precursor to PAR had ripped up one of its major lines between Scranton, PA and Binghamton, destroyed the Colonie, NY yard and shops, and completely decimated any online traffic by discouraging businesses. The Maine Central didn't fare much better and lost its Mountain Division between Portland Maine and St. Johnsbury Vermon. Guilford wanted a through mainline between North Maine Jct. and Mechanicville, NY and lopped this off as well as other branches. The Boston and Maine too lost its local freight branches due to the same reason, and even its mainline saw deferred maintenance. The online customer base on these branches begged for service but were told to find alternatives. The railroad was brought to court in numerous instances but ignored the orders to provide service. On many branches, the maintenance was so bad that trees grew up between the rails. This was used as an excuse to abandon the lines.

What was once a 45-mph freight, 60-mph passenger mainline was reduced to 10 mph outside of the 65 mph - plus, commuter region. Freights outlawed on the 450-mile mainline between North Maine Jct. and Mechanicville due to this reduced traffic. Amtrak discontinued running its New York to Montreal passenger service on the Connecticut River line because that was down to 5 mph in places. The Mechanicville yard was reduced to a pile of rotted ties and a couple of sidings, and the big Colonie yard rotted away.

In 2008 after Norfolk Southern purchased the remnants of the D&H, they needed an eastern connection at Mechanicville where the B&M once interchanged with the D&H. This once huge hump yard was reduced to a few sidings with nothing left otherwise. NS rebuilt this into an intermodal yard so they could run stacks east because they needed to lower them to pass through the Hoosac Tunnel. This rebuilding including a partnership of sorts with PAR called Pan Am Southern. (PAS) as part of the deal, PAS ran the trains while NS put in boatloads of money to bring the westernmost end of the former B&M mainline up to at least 30 mph. This once 60 mph/40 mph line was at least 30 mph! NS also has access as far east as Ayer MA and other branches. But anyway, that was pretty much the only maintenance outside of the commuter rail territory or where Amtrak runs.

After completely running the systems into the ground, the real estate was sold off including the yard in Somerville and Cambridge. The company actually made more money on its land holdings than the railroad, and in addition rented and leased out ROW for communications companies and power lines. To save face, there was a recent attempt to generate business, but it's too little and too late, with their new paint job and ever so sweet attitude towards its customers now.

They became Pan Am Railways after purchasing the remnants of that famous airlines. They actually ran the airline briefly but were ordered to quite by the FAA due to poor maintenance and major safety violations. The name remained and what's left is a shell of two railroads, the D&H was sold off and NS and CP Rail run what's left today.

With that said, the region sees a much brighter future for the railroad in the region after nearly 40 years of being run completely into the ground. In some ways, I think the attitude of the crews reflects the attitude of the company towards its customers and towards its employees. From what I heard, GTI and PAR were definitely not a great company to work for anyway and always had one of the highest turn overs of employees compared to other companies.
 
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