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["Don Bowen" <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>]

> Truckers currently have the biggest "voice" in Congress.  The rail lines 
> are
> far more efficient.  We see that problem here in CA where massive 
> quantities
> of produce *used* to be "trucked" by rail but are now clogging up the
> freeways and sucking down the fuel.  Now the rail lines are either being
> torn up and turned into "urban paths" or left lying to rot.

It is a little more complex than that.  Trucks can deliver produce faster 
than rail.  The cost is higher but trucks are faster.  Railroads have mostly 
given up on perishable loads.  With federal and union rules when a train 
crew times out a train may be left standing on some remote siding until a 
new crew can be brought out.

Railroads have long since given up on what used to be called LCL freight or 
Less than Car Load.  This was the Railway Express where a single package 
could be dropped off at a station.  Now even the stations are gone. 
Railroads now would rather have unit trains, a train of a single commodity. 
Coal trains are a prime example, a train of a single cargo, fill it up, take 
it some where and dump it, then go back to fill it up.  It is easy to 
schedule.  Trains of containers are another example, load a long train at 
Long Beach then haul it to a terminal somewhere where it is unloaded and the 
containers moved to trucks.

In fact the amount of container movement out of Long Beach required another 
track and to keep speeds the track had to be sunk below streets and 
freeways.  Santa Fe is busily putting in double and triple tracks to speed 
up container movement.  UP has four tracks in some areas to speed movement 
of coal trains.  They are trying to double track some of the SP line but SP 
mismanagement is slowing that down.

It is a shame that many branch lines were torn up, we will need them before 
too long.

Don Bowen      KI6DIU
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html