Railroads

[Sourdough]

Hermit:  I have to respectfully disagree with you here.  Last year I took the Amtrak from Ft Lauderdale to Orlando four times.  First time it took five hours, second time it took 8 hours, third time 6 hours, but the last time we sat on a siding just north of Ft Lauderdale for five hours.  Then we sat again on a siding up near Winter Haven for three hours, Then coming out of Tampa, (Yes the Amtrak makes a side trip from winter Haven to Tampa then back, before going on to Orlando) we sat again for two hours.  The explanation each time was we were having to wait for freight trains to clear the tracks.  Freight trains have priority, since the freight lines own the tracks.

That is why I feel if they want to do a passenger service it would be best to completely start from scratch with a monorail system.  The existing tracks are too old, crooked, too many highway and street crossings, and in disrepair, for a train that would travel at 100 MPH.  Plus the tracks do not go the places that people want to go now anyway.  A system following the Interstate Highway System would serve that need.

Plus with all the different rail lines nation wide, and each line with their own schedules, it would be impossible to route a passenger service train coast to coast.

[hotrunner]

One way the RR robber barons Like Morgan and Vanderbilt got filthy rich was by running tracks across other peoples' land for free. Did you know that less than 6% of railroad rights-of-way are actually owned by the RR's? My family farm is bisected by a railroad line; my great-grandfather, like many farmers of that era, signed an agreement that would let the land the rails were on revert back to the current owner of that land if the railroad ever shut down. Guess what happened after that rail line was abandoned? Ever hear of a Rails-to-Trails bike path? Seems a group of bicycle-huggers lobbied Congress in the early '80's to ignore those reversionary clauses in those landowner/RR contracts in order to preseve those RR corridors for future use. Of course, they could then be converted to bike trails (at taxpayer expense, including 10% of federal gas tax $ - SAFETEA funds .) Some railroad co's. simply drew up bogus quit-claim deeds and sold reversionary land as their own to local gov's. and trail groups. Any landowner who fought this outrage was doomed to fight the Government, all the way to the Federal level, at his own expense. Guess who always wins? The only significant victory for landowners was Presault v. Vermont which, on appeal, said the landowner has the right to sue the government once again for compensation under the takings clause of the 5th Amendment Oh boy!
Oh, and guess who signed into law this huge boondoggle, and what could possibly be the biggest socialistic theft of private property in U.S. history? None other than RONALD REAGAN.

[Redtail1949]

hermit..i will have to disagree on the managment of the BN..they are terribly run operationaly if the public only new just how incompetent the rail oerations were they would not invest in them. if they were efficently operated with the public intersest in mind you would have apssenger service tenfold as today and on time 97 % or more.

the bn is rich extreamly rich all on the backbone of coal..coal that burns cleaner than any founf anywhere except colorado. colorado coal is clean but burns so hot it burns the grates out in the coal plants.

bn makes money inspite of itself by having such a lock on the coal business. they do not want passenger trains at all and they are not interested in local frieght service. they want and all roads want long haul door to door unit trains of cars coal produce whatever. i have spent the great majority of my life studying the bn its operations  its books its profits it schedules you name it.

[The Hermit]

Sourdough, you have several good points. My travel with Amtrak was on a sleeper from Syracuse to Florida. There was a stopover in DC to change crews. Intrastate travel in Florida certainly needs improvement. I certainly would be PO'ed at the delays you experienced. I hate flying and won't fly anymore because of several near fatal experiences. So, I am biased there. Nothing wrong with a monarail type system and I do think it would be under one banner to facilitate better scheduling. I mean, heck we can put a man on the moon, good rail travel is obtainable.
Redtail1949, I agree that improvements are needed in service and that BNI could certainly improve. As a company, it is certainly profitable. BNI closed at $98.08/share today. Its dividend is $1.60/shr for a yield of 1.63%. PE is 18.68, Return on earnings is 15%, sales growth is14%. Earnings are at $5.25/shr. Debt ratio is at .85, net profit margin is 12.24%. Financially, it is well run. Customer service wise, it needs improvement. With Buffett's Bershire Hathaway umbrella, there is less concern now with short term profits, so that the company can consentrate on improving service and planning expansion.
I certainly hope it goes that way. I am not versed in the coal stuff, so I can't comment there. I did learn a little something about cleaner coal tho, thank you.
At 74, I would still like to run the rails again in America, hassle free.

  The Hermit

[Redtail1949]

The Hermit:

No better more relaxing way to travel. The scenery on the trains through the rocky in Pacific Northwest and those to California thru the Soutwest are magnificent.

One does not have to try to hard to imagine what it must have been like when they laid those rails to open up America.

The profits mostly came from selling lands long ago deeded to them by the U.S now occupied by Industrial sites and Skyscapers. along with ripping up rail and avbandoning all they could selling the property and then the rails for scrap. they inflated their profits at unbelievable rates. when all those little ideas go dry then it will be time to pay the piper.

[The Hermit]

Redtail1949, At one time Canada had a train that went coast to coast and traveled through the Canadian Rockies. I understand they had dome cars and you could get off and on up to 3 times to sight see, like at Calgary. At that time I think it was several thousand dollars and I could'nt get time off to make the trip. I don't think it runs anymore, but must have been real neat to see. Thank you all for your responses. God bless.



    The Hermit

[Empty Quiver]

Economics and only economics will determine what the transportation system will look like in the US. We are too broke to afford a nationwide subsidized railroad system. Our sugar daddy, China, won't fund it for us.

This nation can probably support a european style rail system along a 100 mile swath around the coasts, after that it will be pretty hit and miss. A few major transportation corridors such as Interstates and that'll be about it. How often would you run passenger service from Minneapolis to Bismarck, ND. or better yet Minot, ND to anywhere. This country is far to sparsly populated to rely on rail for the forseable future. There are fewer people living in rural areas now than at the turn of the century.

[Dixie Dude]

You can use the existing rail system and add a 3rd rail for wider trains, like a Lionel toy train.  The wider trains can go faster and take the turns because of the lower center of gravity and wider foot print.  Basically you double the width, you can carry cargo in containers side by side and double stacked.  Wider passenger cars can carry more passengers and maybe even their personal cars in car carriers with the passenger trains.  When they get where they are going, they get their cars off the train and use them at their local destination.  Existing trains can travel about 180 miles and hour with no modifications.  That is fast enough with existing technology, wider tracks and wider cars.  Existing trains can use these same tracks but only two rails, the middle and one side.  No new property to buy.  If you go monorail, you could make it for passenger use only with aluminum trains so the monorail system wouldn't have to be so heavily made to support it.  It could be done over a 20-50 year period, just like the interstate highway system which took about 20 years or longer to complete. 

[45-70.gov]

i  dont  fly  because  i am not going to give up  my gun

are  their  or  will there be  just restrictions  on  your  CCW

let a private comany  do  it
if no  private company is interese...its not feesable

just one more  place for government to expand

gas  prices will  shoot up  just so we have to ride the government train
where  they  will  register  or confiscate  our  guns

[schutzen]

Redtail1949;

I don't know where you got your information on Colorado coal burning the grates out of the power plants, but I can assure you it is wrong.  Modern utility boilers (read constructed post 1945) do not utilize grates.  Stoker style furnaces that utilize grates are limited to industrial recovery boilers (i.e.: paper mills burning wood waste) and trash burners utilizing metropolitan waste to generate electricity. Most recovery and trash furnaces do utilize coal to stabilize their fires because it is cheaper than diesel, but the erosion of the stoker grates is due to the contaminants in the primary fuel (i.e.: the wood waste and the trash).

Far more important to the utility industry is the chemical composition of the coal.  Basically the trace elements/contaminants in the coal that combine with each other post combustion.  These create the pollutants SO2, NOX, CO2, CO and other trace pollutants that become acid rain.  Coal that is shipped for long distances is usually shipped because the chemical composition of the coal reduces the flue gas/fly ash pollutants and is therefore cheaper for the utility to burn.

[Sourdough]

Dixie Dude:  That would work in theory, if the existing rails were up to standards.  But they are not, look down a rail line sometime and notice how wavy the rails are.  A high sped train needs smooth rails, and those do not exist in the US. 

The existing rails have too many crossings.  Look at the rate of car, truck, and train accidents we are currently having.  The rails currently run through thousands of rural communities in the mid west and western states, with grade crossings.  many of these crossing have nothing but a stop sign for traffic control.  Would you want to live in a small town where your wife and kids crossed the tracks every day, then have trains running 100mph start coming through town?  I would not want to live there.  Think about it if there was an accident between a semi and a train in one of those small communities.  A train derailment could wipe out a large portion of many small committees.

No if the Government, or Private Industry is serious about fast passenger train service, an entirely dedicated new system will be required.  It would be cheaper in the long run than retrofitting the existing system.

[Squib]

I agree with old shooter, government sponsored railroads are good for government agendas

the government can not only screw with independent transportation aka freedom, but can also ship people around easily.  while it sounds far out, remember that a quick government is a dangerous government.  I prefer the government to just sit back and let us do what we do... and since the rails will be as interstate as can be, that means the rails will be as federalized as can be.

45-70 you're right, don't give up your gun like a sheep

auschwitz!

[Redtail1949]

schutzen:

i assure you i do know what i am talking about. i was party to many meetings over just that issue. they went as far as mixing the coal from southern colorado with cooal from wyoming. of course as you may guess that was too expensive to do. i ws party to mant discussions of running trails on the eastern seaborn with southern colorado coal because it burned so clean compared to the high sulpher coal in the east. they tried same problem TOOO HOT.

That was the death of the southern colorado coal in the modern plants. (among many other issues of course)

They told us "...It burned so hot it burned the grates out." I have been to dozens of coal plant literaly a thousand times or even more. I never once looked to see it if was grates or whatever. That was in fact the reason given for not making contracts valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The coal plants really wanted to use it because of air quality standerds and they knew if they could they could put off upgrading their scrubbers as well as other things involved with the pollution.

so that is the truth about the coal from southern colorado. have a nice day.