Railroading in the Peace Garden State

HemiAdda2d Apr 27, 2020

  1. HemiAdda2d

    HemiAdda2d Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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  2. BoxcabE50

    BoxcabE50 HOn30 & N Scales Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    Rant- Just sit back and watch. Some bean counter, who has no clue beyond their pencil or keyboard, will command the rails to be gone. Then will come another slowdown, and need for storage track. Oops. No place left. That means plugging up some facility which they need to be active for another use, OR, paying someone to store cars. Result? Not a penny saved except on paper. In fact, a very good chance they lose money in the end. Same old, same old. Short term gain, long term pain. The same garbage our post-high school educators have been pumping out for decades now, which keeps backfiring in the faces of business. Yet it keeps on being practiced, as it sure sounds good or looks good, on paper. In reality, disastrous, self-destructive.
     
  3. gjslsffan

    gjslsffan Staff Member

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    It always disheartens me, to see any sort of rails, abandoned, taken up, or just left to rot. Once gone you know it will never be replaced. The rail infrastructure in this country (all of it) should be considered a national security component. All the rail route miles were used to max capacity to move the beans, bullets and band-aids, that provided much of the worlds needs to win the second world war. In times of crisis, or when we need to move a LOT of tonnage, the nations RR's have been called upon to deliver, and they always have. But the removal of what appears to be redundant lines, diminishes capacity, and will end up biting us where it hurts the most.
     
  4. Mike VE2TRV

    Mike VE2TRV TrainBoard Member

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    Amen to that. I can't even imagine the chaos on our present railway system if a situation like WW2 happened and peak levels of tonnage moved went up proportionally. Even if it could handle the extra tonnage, the railway network would be vulnerable to disruption if one accident (or even sabotage?) happened and there were no alternate routes. Never mind the extra strain on the power pool because of the increased traffic (during the peak traffic levels in WW2, CN's Turcot roundhouse in Montreal had a throughput of over 140 locomotives a day, and that's not counting the capacity of the huge Point Saint Charles shops). The camel's back would be half a straw away from the breaking point.

    But now people are more concerned about noise from trains going by near their homes (which they bought within sight of rails and didn't expect actual trains to run over them :confused: ). Not anymore! Locos are way quieter than they were fifty years ago (my own ears as witnesses!) and welded rail has taken almost all the clickety-clack of wheels over rail joints. I'll trade their house for my apartment any day of the week.:)

    Railroads built our countries, they made them prosperous, and able to face any threat the world has thrown at us. That illustrious history seems to have been forgotten by far too many near-sighted people.
     
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  5. gjslsffan

    gjslsffan Staff Member

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    There is simply, no replacement for displacement. Drives me nuts about every day.

    Some countries are building this type infrastructure while we abolish, un-do same.

    Our advisories need not awake the sleeping giant. The sleeping giant has been duped.
    I could go on, but you know what I mean is..
     
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  6. BoxcabE50

    BoxcabE50 HOn30 & N Scales Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    And they even take the railroad to court and win! That is truly sick. When you buy a home, (or even rent), it is incumbent upon you to research where you are going to locate yourself. It is called "due diligence." But people do not and get away with it...

    Also, there is an incredibly gross ignorance, including the realtors, of our language. Rails which seem to appear as though minimally or actually unused, are deemed by a stupid public to automatically be "abandoned." That word is so over-used to the point of it being pathetic. Railroads have another legal ownership status known as "out of service." Examples: Tennessee Pass, Saluda... But people just waltz in there, trespass, vandalize and steal. I digress....

    Sorry, Hemi. Didn't mean to hijack....
     
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  7. badlandnp

    badlandnp TrainBoard Member

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    And we see the results today in under useage of the rails by customers tired of dealing with giant, unresponsive and uncaring corporate outfits. The congestion of the containers system is a good case in point. Having consolidated to save pennies, things are so backed up now the big outfits are just flummoxed in how to fix it. Maybe they should have kept their vision in the "long term" rather than quarterly profits BS.

    Hopefully things will turn around.
     
  8. HemiAdda2d

    HemiAdda2d Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    Corporate greed knows no bounds.... Grenora Sub has not a single rail customer. Powers Lake elevator has spur tracks, but if they ship, it goes by truck. If for not this use, there's no reason BNSF keeps it.
     
  9. BoxcabE50

    BoxcabE50 HOn30 & N Scales Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    Exactly what I was saying in my earlier post. If they dump it, the next time they need to store, they have no place convenient.
     
  10. HemiAdda2d

    HemiAdda2d Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    First light on Lostwood Hill.

    _MG_1736.jpg

    Golden hour at Lunds Valley:

    _MG_1809.jpg
     
  11. Kurt Moose

    Kurt Moose TrainBoard Member

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    Beautiful old "prairie skyscraper"!:love:
     
  12. Mike VE2TRV

    Mike VE2TRV TrainBoard Member

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    The lighting really makes those locos shine!:)
     
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  13. ddechamp71

    ddechamp71 TrainBoard Member

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    Very interresting posts above, and moving pictures of shiny locomotives running on weed embedded track (an interresting subject for a model railroad, in my opinion)... BTW I would be interrested to know what the figures are for US railroads dealing with total mileage within time. Here in "stinkin cheese eater country", France, the apex was 51 000 miles of rail lines in 1932 (many of which were narrow gauge secondary lines), 26 000 miles in 1976 and now only 17 000 miles (and more and more trucks on the highways)... Has the US railroad network been decaying with the same rate ? I didn't find any output about.

    Dom
     
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  14. BoxcabE50

    BoxcabE50 HOn30 & N Scales Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    Here is one chart:

    https://www.railserve.com/stats_records/railroad_route_miles.html
     
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  15. ddechamp71

    ddechamp71 TrainBoard Member

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    Thanks Boxcab. ;) Glad to see that total lenght has remainded nearly constant for the last 20 years.. ;) In France we lost 13% of railroad's network during the same time span.

    Dom
     

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