Passenger Trains > The Lost Promise of the American Railroad

The Lost Promise of the American Railroad by Mark Reutter, which appeared in the Wilson Quarterly Winter 1994 issue can be found at http://archive.wilsonquarterly.com/sites/default/files/articles/WQ_VOL18_W_1994_Article_01.pdf.

Here is the head note of the article:
A whole new breed of train took to the American rails during the 1930s, emblazoning names like Flying Yankee in American mythology. Fashioned from sleekly proportioned metal and powered by high-tech diesel engines, the new streamliners slashed city-to-city running times and made American rail passenger service the envy of the world. Here Mark Reutter recalls these days of promise-as well as the blunders that put America far behind in the worldwide race of high-speed rail.

Mark Reutter is the former editor of Railroad History and author of Making Steel: Sparrows Point and the Rise and Ruin of American Industrial Might (2005, rev. ed.).

It's an interesting read.

OCV



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/21/17 11:56 by CharlesVarnes.

It was a time when DESIGN played a huge role in the public's mind. Raymond Loewey and others created stream lined trains, even updated older steam locomotives. Public schools, highway bridges, skyscrapers, luxury liners, new cars, and monoplanes all strove to be eye catching...

I have to say that people like Loewey merely imparted STYLE to objects DESIGNED by ENGINEERS.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/21/17 12:47 by Kimball.

Kimball Wrote:
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> I have to say that people like Loewey merely
> imparted STYLE to objects DESIGNED by ENGINEERS.


Form follows function, and all that?

CharlesVarnes Wrote:
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> It's an interesting read.
>
> OCV

Thanks for posting the link to the article. Might be too long of a read for the impatient members.

The fact that Washington's encroachment on the transportation business not only violated the principles of free enterprise preached by the Republican Party but contributed to the downfall of an important taxpaying industry only added to the sense of frustration and betrayal among railroad officials.

"When the president signed the bill, I told him he had just signed the death warrant of American passenger service," Howard E. Simpson,president of the B & 0 Railroad, recalled in an interview. An apparently indifferent Eisenhower replied, 'We'll see."

The bill referred to the article was the National System of Interstate and Defense Highway Act of 1956, which established the Highway Trust Fund.

There's a modern ideology pushed by some think tanks that bubbles to the surface during election season, which implies highways and automobiles are the epitome of free enterprise. This excerpt, along with other statements in the article imply highways and the airlines got direct and indirect government subsidies which contradict that ideology. I'm crying over spilled milk, since "Lost Promise" means game is over for passenger railroading in America, but people (ANY side) might want to rethink the brainwash they receive during election season, before they unwittingly vote away and destroy the next great potential.

.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/16/17 09:43 by darkcloud.

The big trouble is that, for whatever reason,
too many people don't want to think for
themselves. They may well have very good
and quite understandable reasons for not
wanting to bother with the effort involved
in trying to figure out things for themselves.

And they may be plain just too tired after having
to deal with all the things they need to do in
order to just keep their lives together, or they
may have been brainwashed, or they may just not
want to be different, because being different
can get them ostracized.

Another excellent book to read about railroads in
the US and what happened to them in the last century,
and why, is "Getting There: The Epic Struggle between
Road and Rail in the American Century", by Stephen B.
Goddard, 1994, 351 pages. This excellent book is very
well-written and extensively footnoted, and has an
excellent index.

"Getting There" documents why American railroads made
the decisions they did, and how the very powerful
highway lobby essentially "got in bed with" the feds in
a way that would have gotten railroad official in big
trouble if they had done the same things. He also says
that, in some ways, the railroads "drove the hearse to
their own funeral". And both things happened long before
Eisenhower was elected President.

In any case, what happened to American railroads was
not necessary or inevitable, and has helped to make this
country but a shadow of its former self. Yes, under
D. J. Russell, the SP became not only a national leader
in railroad technology and innovation, but a world leader.
But those glorious days are in the past, a past that is
distant and even ancient to the younger generation, most of
whom have never even ridden a train.

One writer in Trains Magazine e said that when Amtrak was
created, that made trains essentially invisible to the
general public -- and that was a very bad thing.

No, Eisenhower was certainly no friend of the railroads.
And what has happened to American railroads, and to our
industry in general in this country, is terrible.

Yes, it is "game over" for really good passenger rail in this
country. And fewer and fewer people have any idea how much we
have lost, as time marches relentlessly on, and the Glory Days
of American passenger -- and freight -- railroading recede farther
and farther into the past.

We all deswerve so much more.......

I thought safe to safer was supposed to be a way to improve passenger trains service?



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/17 20:04 by Molino.

Molino Wrote:
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> I thought safe to safer was supposed to be a way
> to improve passenger trains service?

You mean Amtrak's (and Boardman's) "Safe-2-Safer" program? I think others can comment on how effective THAT was.

The article linked by OP was written in 1994, way before Internet trolling was fashionable. The article predates Trainorders by about 4 years, although my claim needs to be verified. Facts in the article seem accurate, at least the ones I know about. In the overall scheme of things looking back 23 years, "Safe-2-Safer" seems a big non factor.