You know what? I kind of like National Transportation Safety Board member Earl F. Weener, who has been an NTSB member since 2010.
Industry watchers greeted the news of the recent BNSF derailment in Doon, Iowa, as typical ho-hum news. 32 tank railcars hauling crude derailed on a stretch of track that had been compromised by floodwaters. Several of the cars were ruptured and there was a crude spill. Emergency services (BNSF and others) were able to contain the size of the spill, and residents of the area were evacuated as a precaution. Luckily for all parties involved, there was no conflagration whatsoever as a result of the derailment.
A reliable rail industry source who wishes not to be named related this story to me from on board a recent trip on Amtrak 19, the long-distance Crescent. The words speak for themselves. They are unedited:
The late Louis W. Menk once said that locomotive engineers were “nothing more than glorified truck drivers.” Those words stuck in my head throughout my 35-year railroad career—mostly spent as a locomotive engineer. To be quite honest, the thought of them angered me every time I climbed into the cab of my locomotive. I was determined to prove him wrong—to be the best damn engineer in the world.
Watching Washington, July 2018: When everybody owns something, nobody accepts accountability or responsibility. Such is the circumstance of Amtrak, a near-50-year-old orphan wandering in a public policy wilderness, dependent on grudgingly provided public assistance often provided with conditions and objectives so conflicted as to suggest a Marx Brothers comedy.
Martin J. (Marty) Oberman, 73, an attorney and perennial fixture in Chicago and Illinois Democratic politics, is President Trump’s choice to fill a vacant Democratic seat on the five-member Surface Transportation Board (STB). He must be confirmed by the Senate.
What does a deflated balloon look like? That is becoming an apt metaphor for travel on an Amtrak interregional train. The regime of CEO Richard Anderson is eliminating services and amenities as fast as they can think up items to ditch.
For railroaders this summer, a cerebral repast beckons in the form of two new books illuminating the careers of legendary CEOs.
If you tell a kindergartener that he or she can have ice cream for breakfast with no ill effect and that it will make the lima beans at lunch taste better, that kid will hug your leg and tell you that you’re the best. They don’t see the tummy ache coming or know that you’re lying about the lima beans.
Amidst extravagant accusations of inhospitable dispatching by host freight railroads of its long-distance passenger trains, taxpayer subsidized Amtrak is aggressively manipulating its privileged position in contravention of a congressional intent to expand private-sector operation of passenger trains. Amtrak’s strong-arm tactics also serve to squeeze monopoly rents from state and regional transit authorities, whose commuter trains share Amtrak-owned facilities.
