gildone

Ohio rail history: 1948 Nickel Plate Railroad promotional movie (18 min): YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. 1946 Pennsylvania Railroad promotional film part (1 of 3):

Amtrak's state-funded Hiawatha Corridor from Milwaukee to Chicago-- 7 round trips per day. Wedge-issue politics because it's an election year. Look at Mike DeWine. He was always a reliable pro-Amtrak, pro-rail vote in the US Senate. He also supported the Ohio Hub plan, which the 3C as currently proposed was always generally considered to be the first step-- the spine of the system. Now, because he's running against Cordray and the Ohio GOP has been trying to make Cordray look bad because he won't take legal action to stop Strickland from spending the $25 million on the required and necessary planning work, he's suddenly against it. I generally thought DeWine to be a reasonably moderate, level-headed senator. But, with sleazy game-playing like this, I have to consider him another useless, establishment politician. I seem to recall that sometime in the last decade, the Republican National Committee added support for passenger rail in the party platform. I wish I could remember the year, but it 2000 or later. Anyway, either they forgot, don't care because of the election, or they took it out. edit: It has been virtually impossible, so far, to get the media to cover this aspect of the election. Seems to me that if candidates are being so blatantly dishonest about something that the media has covered as a campaign issue, they should be letting the public know.

I checked the book. I was right in a way, but overall still wrong (my, that's political speak, isn't it?). Prior to the Lackawana re-branding their NY-CHI train the "Phoebe Snow", it was called the "Lackawana Limited." According to the schedule in "The Trains We Rode", there was a time when the Lackawana Limited ran through cars on the Michigan Central via Detroit to Chicago. The primary route was still on the Nickel Plate. Judging by the type of print on the schedule, it looks like it must have been pre-1930, maybe?

KJP wrote: Actually through cars were forwarded by the Nickel Plate RR and ran to Chicago via Fort Wayne, not through Michigan or even Toledo. I'll look again. You're right about the Nickel Plate. I got confused. Lucius Beebe's book The Trains We Rode, had a schedule in it with the train going through Detroit. It surprised me. I didn't have the book in front of me last night when I posted this. I guess I'm confused. It's at the office because I lent it to someone. I'll look again. In the mean time, I edited my post. My batting average isn't very good for my last two posts, Sorry, everybody! Is there a dunce cap emoticon?

^Well, it was 54 years ago. Maybe he misremembered. Now that I think about it, he's told me that a couple of times. I think the first time he said mail cars. My dad's railroad career was 42 years. He worked a lot of crazy hours and a lot of different jobs and 5 different railroads: Nickel Plate (short stint as a clerk), Santa Fe (for like 3 or 6 months when he was laid off in Cleveland), NYC, Penn Central, Conrail). When the Penn Central filed bankruptcy, the bank wouldn't take his paycheck for deposit unless he had enough in his savings account to cover it. Lots of years, lots of work, many thousands of cars switched. He'll tell you he put in so many hours that he worked two lifetimes on the railroad. Apologies, everybody!

New York Central promotional video showing all the behind-the-scenes work that made the 20th Century Limited such a special train. My dad hired out on the New York Central in the 1950s. He told me that for a while, he worked a job out of Cleveland Union Terminal that included shuttling EDIT: mail cars up to Collinwood where they were added onto the 20th Century Limited while it was re-fueling there. The train itself didn't serve Union Terminal. Part 1: Part 2:

The Lackawana "Phoebe Snow" operated between Hoboken, NJ (but connected to NY City by ferry) and Chicago. It was a joint effort with Nickel Plate which operated the train west of Buffalo. It went through Conneaut, Cleveland, Toledo, then onto to Chicago. The Lackawana never tried to market the train to compete with the speed of the New York Central's 20th Century Limited or the Pennsylvania Railroad's Broadway Limited. It couldn't because it was a 23 hour schedule. They marketed it as a more relaxed route for discerning travelers who didn't have to be in a hurry and wanted to enjoy the scenery of NE Pennsylvania and southern New York. Like Amtrak today, it was a middle-of-the-night train in Ohio. I found this video on You Tube. It was shot in the 1950s. The guy who made the video bought the 16 mm films used for it at a garage sale. The man who made the films had died and his family wanted to get rid of the stuff. They referred to it as "his railroad junk". The footage was shot in NE Pennsylvainia:

It would be too expensive a fix for America's grand old stations, but what we need to consider over the long run is more "open-plan" stations like you see in Europe's big cities. Their big-city stations are open and airy with wider platforms and few, if any, choke points. Amtrak's coach waiting area in Chicago is claustrophobic. The ceiling is too low, the seats uncomfortable, and every gate is a choke point.

Rode one of the steam excursions last Saturday (9/25) that the CVSR had for their annual "Steam in the Valley" event. For the most part it went well, but there was some key disorganization on the part of CVSR that I found both surprising and disappointing. 1. Boarding was completely disorganized. Someone on the crew should have been given a megaphone in order to speak to the crowd of boarding passengers in order to give them boarding instructions. Instead, passengers were walking around confused asking the crew questions they couldn't answer. The crew personnel were not prepared by their management to answer simple questions like: "where is the dome car" or "where is car number XXX". The crew didn't even understand the car numbering scheme that was being used. One of the crew even told me "they don't tell us anything". 2. They de-boarded everyone at Indigo Lake so the train could to a run-by that passengers could watch, photograph, film, etc. De-boarding was just as disorganized as boarding. First we were told to go in one end of the car to get off, then several minutes later, while we were still waiting in line to get off that we were told to go to the other end of the car. Second, they should have also been on the loudspeaker before everyone got off explaining safety procedures: staying on one side of the tracks, not standing too close to the tracks for taking our photos, etc. It was a mess with CVSR employees trying to herd people around and keep them away from the tracks after everyone was off the train. 3. Again, no boarding instructions when we got back on the train at Indigo Lake. 4. When we got off the train at Akron Northside Station at the end of the excursion, again, there were no de-boarding instructions and we went through similar de-boarding problems. Get off at this end of the car, a line forms, then several minutes later "sorry folks get off at the other end". Then there was something about a brake test in the middle of the de-boarding process that wasn't explained, except to a few people within earshot of the train personnel with radios. Hello CVSR... you have a loudspeaker system on your trains. Please use it! Overall, it was a good experience, but it was disappointing that there wasn't better organization. Lack of organization could impact safety, if they aren't careful. Video I shot:

^We have tickets for the morning run this coming Saturday. Anyone know what time CVSR will be shuttling the locomotive down from Fitzwater Yard to Akron Northside?

First, it's not a 39 MPH train. It will travel up to 79 MPH when track and signal improvements are made and the avergage speed will likely be in the low to mid-50 MPH range. Second, the average speed for similar corridors around the U.S. is in the mid-50 MPH range and every single one of those corridors have seen significant and steady growth in ridership since they began. But the governor and ODOT let the meme about "low speed" get out of hand. It's their own fault.

^It's pretty apparent that they don't really care about thorough research and balance when it comes to this issue. What's worse, $50-million in road damage from increased steel coil truck loads, which the trucking companies aren't paying plus another $45-million from increased weights for outbound, overseas shipping containers (again unpaid damage), or $17 million/yr for the 3C which the freight benefits of will remove trucks from the road and reduce road damage by $21.2 to $42.4 million annually? What's more useful: $1.6 million/mile for the 3C Quick Start or the $14+ million per mile that ODOT spends on concrete soundwalls? The Dispatch could care less about these (and other) facts.

Blogger explains how she came to prefer train travel: http://olgabonfiglio.blogspot.com/2010/09/how-i-became-rail-fan.html

By the way, here's Dispatch editor Ben Marrison's contact info: [email protected] 614.461.8827

The magazine, "Geotimes", which is the academic journal for news and trends in Geology concluded in 2005: “The inorganic origin remains a hypothesis; it has not been proven to be a significant contributor to currently known economic petroleum accumulations.” http://www.geotimes.org/oct05/feature_abiogenicoil.html We can't bet our future on abiotic/abiogenic oil, not by a long shot.

According to a study released by the Pentagon earlier this year, you may very well get your wish... Anyway, regarding the Dispatch... they obviously have no concern for the truth and no desire to do what it takes to properly and fully inform people about this project. "Ohio's Greatest Daily Newspaper"?, don't make me laugh.

http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-08-18/death-matthew-simmons

I would too, but I'm stuck here for various reasons for the foreseeable future. I'm going to have to make the best of it for a while... Germany just came out with a peak oil report with similar conclusions the Pentagon released early this year: oil price spikes within 3 years, depletion setting in after 2014. This may be our last chance to start building an alternative to our oil-guzzling transportation system before the fecal matter hits the rotary oscillator. Predictions are a tricky thing, though (Matt Simmons was going certainly going to lose his bet about $200/bbl oil this year, but he died of a heart attack last month). Only time will tell.

I understand, and agree. I quit TV news and commercial radio years ago. Don't even have cable or satellite (never have). It's sad to see that Strickland isn't fighting back very well and not turning the tables on Kasich when it comes to the 3C. If he loses, it will be his own fault. And the 3C will suffer as a result...

^This was another hatchet job by the Dispatch. Nash twisted around the stuff about the freights opposing 110mph. What the state has been negotiating so far with them is 79 mph. They haven't yet discussed 110 mph and won't until after the 79 mph trains have been up and running for a while and the state has taken 79 mph service as far as it can reasonably go. Then they will negotiate higher speeds. Ben Marrison at the Dispatch needs to hear from people about their biased, hatched job coverage: [email protected]. Don't berate them. Make your criticism constructive. Be polite.

^Would Missouri DOT have any info?

That's not just a midwest problem. It has crept into just about everything nationwide. There is no sense of common purpose and working to together anymore. This is becoming one of the downfalls of our nation. Also, it has been discussed here several times that there are ways to eventually tie Akron into the 3C and CLE-PGH corridors. So, it's not like they have to or will be left out forever. In order to make that work, though, the corridors have to be built first. One step at a time.

KJP's post is also a great example of how the Ohio Democrats are themselves too clueless to understand that they could turn this issue to their advantage. They're spineless and dense. Not much of a choice anymore: Republicans who would turn against their grandmothers if it would make a good wedge issue, and clueless, spineless, wishy-washy Democrats who couldn't run an effective campaign against an amoeba.

Oh yes he can. You aren't seeing what motivates politicians. They see soft polling numbers for 3C, and see Strickland as vulnerable on that issue. So even if Kasich knows what the facts are, they won't serve his run for the governor's office. Consider: + There is bipartisan support for hauling heavier steel shipments by truck but doesn't support increasing fees on trucks to pay for the damage roads they will do: annual subsidy $50 million. + There is bipartisan support for increasing truck weights to haul Ohio-based agricultural products but no increase in weight-distance fees to offset the damage to Ohio's roads: annual subsidy $45 million. + GOP wants to eliminate the late fee on driver's license renewals without coming up with a way to replace the annual loss to Ohio's budget: cost $30 million. + Budget hawks are silent on the ODOT's seven-year increase in costs to operate/maintain/support the added highway infrastructure planned/underway without an identified way to pay those operating costs: $3.3 billion over seven years (see: http://www.urbanohio.com/forum2/index.php/topic,18328.msg504531.html#msg504531). + 3C annual operating expense to Ohio: $17 million (but just $3.4 million in each of the first three years). The only one of these costs which so-called fiscal conservatives are upset about, claiming it will "bankrupt the state," is the $17 million for 3C. Hypocrisy is spoken when self-interest is the motivation. And the self-interest comes from the highway lobby who fears a change of culture in Ohio from its drive-everywhere mentality to one where people actually have a choice. They don't fear 3C's failure. They fear its success. It's really too bad that Ohio's major media outlets are so lazy and clueless that they haven't picked up on this. Some have attempted to prod some of the major newspapers to look into the political end of this, but the prodding was ignored. I have very little respect left for the media.

And for the improvements to freight rail infrastructure that will take trucks off the road and reduce that $45 million, that makes the $17 million look even smaller.