OK, I've been trying to think of how to respond to this thread since it was started.
I'll say this. I was a US Army Transportation Corps officer. I was taught how to load ships, how to organize truck convoys, and a little bit about rail ops. I did "Command" the base railroad at Ft. Eustis. (two SW-7s operational.)
After the Army I went back to school at Northwestern University and got a Master of Science degree in transportation.
After NU I went to work for the ICG. In all this time the two people who taught me the most about moving freight were: 1) John Kneiling through his Trains column and, 2) my mentor at the ICG, Al Watkins. (Watkins had a club foot that kept him out of WWII. He started out as a trainman on the Northshore's intermodals between Chicago and Milwaukee and ended up as Director of Intermodal Priceing at the ICG. Enough said.)
Kneiling's writing was educational and priceless.
A couple of comments:
Hayne, not Hane, is the correct spelling of the town where Southern had their car shop.
The previous poster's comment about DPM and the "too high" Minnesota State Income Tax begs for additional comment. DPM fell for the official BN story hook, line, and sinker. Here's the real story, as it appeared in the BNSF-published book "Leaders Count" as told by a retired BN official (my copy of the book is buried somewhere so I can't tell you who the official was as this time).
Anyway, top BN management at the time felt that there was a lot of "deadwood" in the upper ranks of BN management and they wanted to do some housecleaning. Remember that both GN and NP headquarters had also been in St. Paul, Minn. (both in the same building even) so many BN officials had spent years in the St. Paul GOB as they moved up the management ladder; they were part of the downtown St. Paul business scene, had homes in nice Twin Cities suburbs (North Oaks in particular), had lake cabins in Northern Minnesota or Wisconsin, had raised families in the area so they had grandchildren to visit, and in short were thoroughly settled in the area.
Top BN management decided to move the headquarters to a location so distant and unpalatable (Fort Worth, Texas) that officials would decide to take retirement (aided by a severance package) rather than move somewhere a thousand miles away from the grandkids and the cabin. The plan worked as many senior officials did leave the railroad instead of relocating.
Now you know the rest of the story,
Good Day
Kurt Hayek (with apologies to the late Paul Harvey)
I did not care for the man then. After many years and rereading his column, I still don't.
I will say he accurately forecast the de-industrialization of the US.
Jeff
jeffhergertI will say he accurately forecast the de-industrialization of the US.
I'm still waiting to see if the 'Balkanization' (a term I learned from him first) comes to follow...
schlimmThe article in question was in the Jan, 5, 1986 Trains. It published only three more Kneiling columns after that, a second article in Jan., and in Feb.and March.
Given the usual lead time for editorial content, the last two or three columns were probably already in the pipeline when the "blowup" occurred.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
tree68 schlimmThe article in question was in the Jan, 5, 1986 Trains. It published only three more Kneiling columns after that, a second article in Jan., and in Feb.and March. Given the usual lead time for editorial content, the last two or three columns were probably already in the pipeline when the "blowup" occurred.
It would be interesting to see that January column and see why it got JK canned. Frankly, I didn't think he was all that innovative. His column seemed to be mostly a "one-trick pony" show, with endless repetitions of variations on that theme.
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
Overmod jeffhergertI will say he accurately forecast the de-industrialization of the US. I'm still waiting to see if the 'Balkanization' (a term I learned from him first) comes to follow...
schlimm Overmod I'm still waiting to see if the 'Balkanization' (a term I learned from him first) comes to follow... The geopolitical term "Balkanization" dates to the early 1800's and became more widespread in use right after WWI. It had nothing to do with railroading until Kneiling misapplied it.
Overmod I'm still waiting to see if the 'Balkanization' (a term I learned from him first) comes to follow...
He (and I) were referring in context to the specific use of the term to describe division of the United States itself into regions of internal interest stronger than 'Federal' ties. (I will confess that I was no more than about 12 when I read about his 'take' on the subject, and hadn't learned any formal foreign policy or Realpolitik then... ;-} )
Precisely how do you consider that Kneiling 'misapplied' it? Did you think he was referring to regional combinations of railroads? Because that was quite different from what he meant, and what I recall him saying, on the subject.
JGK made several useful points, but he seemed unwilling to conform to legal procedure, and not just regulatory procedure, if he felt that it got in the way. I remember a situation during the Penn Central bankruptcy in which he wrote that the chief operating officer should take a certain action without asking the court for permission. "Don't ask, just do!". A few months later, one of the letters to the editor was from an attorney who called him to task on this attitude, indicating that it would have led to a contempt citation.
Quoting sandiego: "Hayne, not Hane, is the correct spelling of the town where Southern had their car shop." Thanks, sandiego, for the correction. I knew better, and should have looked it up to make certain.
Johnny
OvermodPrecisely how do you consider that Kneiling 'misapplied' it? Did you think he was referring to regional combinations of railroads? Because that was quite different from what he meant, and what I recall him saying, on the subject.
No, I did not think that at the time since the US has always been a nation of regions. Some attempted that "Balkanization" in 1861, fortunately unsuccessfully. When Kneiling ventured into areas about which he had no knowledge, such as law and history, his columns were not useful.
Kneiling His column was one of the first things I read each month, and I miss him. He had many good ideas, even if he did step on some toes in presenting them. With out some to stir the pot and toss in new ideas, trains would be only in museums and history books. Much like the stage coach and pony express.
What a delightful thread.
I remember reading Kneiling's column as a kid in the sixties. I remember his ornery prickliness for sure, but learned a lot about the intersection of the business, politics and technology of railroading nonetheless.
My impression even then was of an angry radical. Those folks often have pure hearts and valid gripes, but in a world of competing interests, compromise and cooperation often gets you farther than confrontation and conflict. Maybe you need a little of both, but don't be surprised when you're met with strong counter-confrontation and intransigence, and maybe stalemate.
But like I'm saying, there's a place for those angry radicals too. Kneiling clearly (as detailed above) got a whole lot right, and would've endorsed a lot that has happened in the freight railroad renaissance, again on the business/operational side, in political policy and with the technology. Did it happen as fast or as purely as he would've wanted? Of course not.
I can tell that the folks commenting here are among those railfans who also have a deep and abiding interest in why the trains run as they do, what function they fulfill, and so on. Not just the visceral joy of observing those big noisy national-scale machines and their interesting color schemes.
It's funny you mention "balkanization", I think I first saw the word in his column too, I think it was in reference to "firewalling" all freight railroading east of Hagerstown and Harrisburg and Albany to protect against hopelessly moribund. Which might not be a perfectly accurate use of the term, but it does get the idea across.
Actually I think a lot of the growth in my vocabulary came via writers like Kneiling and DPM.
schlimm ... the US has always been a nation of regions. Some attempted that "Balkanization" in 1861, fortunately unsuccessfully. When Kneiling ventured into areas about which he had no knowledge, such as law and history, his columns were not useful.
... the US has always been a nation of regions. Some attempted that "Balkanization" in 1861, fortunately unsuccessfully. When Kneiling ventured into areas about which he had no knowledge, such as law and history, his columns were not useful.
The ICC practiced Balkanization. Have some old catalogues that say "slightly higher Denver and west ". That was during the price fixing era by manufacturers.
If Mr. Kneiling was speaking politically when he referred to the "Balkanization" of the US then he may have been as accurate a prophet as one of Macbeth's witches.
Looked at a "Red State - Blue State" map of the US, especially after election day, REALLY looked at it? I don't know about you but it scares the hell out of me.
I wouldn't take it to heart, Firelock. Those maps, which one can confuse with permanent, have a way of moving. Remember, for instance, the "Republican lock on the electoral college." That was proclaimed after Bush I extended the Gipper's winning streak in 1988.
Before that, remember that pundits proclaimed the death of the Republican Party after the Johnson landslide of 1964. Only 4 years later, we had Nixon, despite the defection of several states for Wallace that Nixon would have won otherwise.
Consistency from the distracted, unserious American electorate is the one thing you cannot have.
blue streak 1 The ICC practiced Balkanization. Have some old catalogues that say "slightly higher Denver and west ". That was during the price fixing era by manufacturers.
Kneiling's Balkanization was economic, not political. In his view, it was caused by dysfunctional long-distance transportation - i.e., the railroads. As a result, without the ability to carry goods long distances quickly and cheaply, economic activity tended to become concentrated within a day or two's truck haul of a major center - usually ports. He liked to cite examples of the oranges offered for sale in New York City having been shipped from Israel, not from Florida. He devoted an entire column to the trend, complete with a map showing his version of the resulting economic 'city-states' [my term], a couple variations, which as I recall ranged from 10 to 15 or similar. I'll see if I can dig that one up.
- Paul North.
A apt quote pertaining to Kneiling's Balkanization from a Railway Man post on 12-12-2008 in page 2 of the thread here on "Most Needed Capacity Projects" at: http://cs.trains.com/trn/f/111/t/143220.aspx?sort=DESC&pi332=2 [emphasis added - PDN]
"I think Kneiling's observation of Balkanization is no longer operative. In his day there wasn't a tremendous flow of goods and commodities over long distances. There were no massive flows of 40' boxes and PRB coal spanning 1/2 the continent, much less 1/2 the distance around the globe. In Kneiling's day the average move of lumber by rail was 300 miles. Now moves of 3,000 miles are commonplace.
. . .
I like your analogy of hub and spoke, though perhaps a better way to look at it is many hubs with interlaced spokes, and the hubs are not where the trains cross but where the traffic begins. Think of the U.S. as Los Angeles, Houston-Beaumont-Baton Rouge, the PRB, North Jersey, and Chicago, and a lot of spokes interlacing them, secondary hubs such as Seattle-Tacoma, Atlanta, Norfolk, and Detroit, and crossroads such as Kansas City and Memphis. . . .
RWM"
More later when I don't need to sleep so much or get to work early tomorrow morning . . .
While another poster said that the previous comparison between Rush Limbaugh and John Kneiling was an attempt to stir up trouble, I still think that there are some valid points to explore; the similarities occurred to me as soon as I saw this topic (Kneiling) listed.Both men could be described as "professional bomb-throwers" who are paid to throw out inflammatory statements to stimulate controversy. Of course, they are orders of magnitude apart with Limbaugh reaching millions of radio listeners a day and making a very comfortable living doing so, while Kneiling was limited to a single page column appearing once a month in a somewhat obscure limited circulation magazine for railroad enthusiasts (wonder what he got paid for each column? $100? $50? or less?).While Limbaugh is notorious for name-calling and character assassination, Kneiling was no slouch in the insult department either. After reading a number of his columns one could distill his opinions of railroad people into this: Railroad managers were inbred, old-fashioned, inflexible, and incompetent types who would be hard-pressed to run a lemonade stand at a profit, while rank-and-file railroad employes were lazy, overpaid mental defectives who would be unable to obtain employment anywhere else. (NOTE: I make no claim that these were his exact words, but rather the drift of his opinions instead.)While name-calling and inflammatory statements are usually sure-fire ways to pep-up radio audiences and magazine circulation (wonder if this entered DPM's mind also?), they don't work if you are trying to advance a particular course of action, as one soon learns when taking a class on writing. Possibly, the most important rule of persuasive argument is to not insult your audience (or potential audience). Written down here, this rule appears so obvious that it sounds stupid to even mention it, but all of you have encountered speakers and writers who are painfully oblivious to this and then wonder why they can't convince anyone to accept their ideas. Obviously, if Kneiling was serious about getting railroaders to try some of his concepts he seemed to be going at it completely backwards.Another important rule of persuasive argument is to be sure all your facts are totally correct. Nothing destroys the credibility of a presenter faster than errors of fact. One error makes, in the audience's mind, all the rest of the presenter's facts suspect, even if true. Exaggerations, stereotypes, and similar "stretchers" are in the erroneous fact category also and have no place in persuasive argument. Looking at Kneiling's comments above shows him, by resorting to stereotypes, guilty of factual errors that ruin his credibility. Railroaders, being human, run the gamut from top-notch to clinkers, a fact that Kneiling missed or chose to ignore.All of the above assumes (as the previous posters on this topic have also assumed) that John Kneiling was actually serious about what he wrote in his columns, rather than a playing grand joke at Trains' readers expense. Far fetched? Think I've gone around the bend? Then let's consider this:Rush Limbaugh again—does he really believe (and advocate) everything he says on his show? Or is he just tossing out a bunch of junk to keep people listening so his ratings (and advertising rates) stay high? All I can say is that if I was in his position the temptation to throw verbal gasoline on a fire and watch the ensuing fireball would be irresistible.Now, let's look at John Kneiling. Very little of his background ever appeared in "Trains" but I do know that he had both an engineering degree and a Professional Engineer registration. Speaking from experience, I can say that to obtain both requires intelligence and a fair bit of hard work. Also, the pittance he received for his columns (and occasional articles) certainly wouldn't support him (and his family if he had one) so his consulting engineer work was his main source of income. As a consulting engineer, he would (or should) have been acutely aware of the laws and regulations regarding professional liability, contracts, permits, professional registration, etc. He may even have been an expert witness in a court case. All of this certainly seems to indicate that he knew far more about the legal system than implied by his columns. Finally, his designs for the integral train were sound from an engineering standpoint; his book "Integral Train Systems" explained the concept in a clear and rational manner also.The above seems to indicate a rational, intelligent person that no one would associate with the raving wacko tone of his columns; they usually started fairly tamely, but then got wilder as they progressed. Here's my (wild) idea for the discrepancy: Given that he did have a big ego, I can picture him sitting down at his typewriter, tossing back a shot or two to loosen the thought processes, and then typing whatever goofiness came into his mind, chuckling all the while at the thought of the "Trains" readers reacting in serious outrage to his writing. Well, why not? Given a free hand, wouldn't you? And could DPM have been in on the game also? After all, John Kneiling certainly kept "Trains" magazine in everyone's mind, and vice versa, considering it's been almost 30 years since Kneiling's last column appeared and we're still talking about him.Unfortunately, we will never know the real story. But, I think it's a fun way to remember him as the great jokester rather than as the wild-eyed, off-the-wall type his columns implied.RIP JohnKurt Hayek
The descriptions of Kneiling remind me of a regular poster on a small local webboard I frequent.
The topics are often political (or devolve to same), and he always takes the liberal side - or so it appears. Sometimes his posts are so off the wall as to be ridiculous. Either that, or that's his way of satirizing the topic, serving as a warning of sorts of how bad it could be.
His usual detractors generally take his posts at face value and argue the points from that angle. I've started taking his posts as satire, as noted. Makes the entire exchange kinda funny.
sandiego While another poster said that the previous comparison between Rush Limbaugh and John Kneiling was an attempt to stir up trouble, I still think that there are some valid points to explore; the similarities occurred to me as soon as I saw this topic (Kneiling) listed.Both men could be described as "professional bomb-throwers" who are paid to throw out inflammatory statements to stimulate controversy. Of course, they are orders of magnitude apart with Limbaugh reaching millions of radio listeners a day and making a very comfortable living doing so, while Kneiling was limited to a single page column appearing once a month in a somewhat obscure limited circulation magazine for railroad enthusiasts (wonder what he got paid for each column? $100? $50? or less?).While Limbaugh is notorious for name-calling and character assassination, Kneiling was no slouch in the insult department either. After reading a number of his columns one could distill his opinions of railroad people into this: Railroad managers were inbred, old-fashioned, inflexible, and incompetent types who would be hard-pressed to run a lemonade stand at a profit, while rank-and-file railroad employes were lazy, overpaid mental defectives who would be unable to obtain employment anywhere else. (NOTE: I make no claim that these were his exact words, but rather the drift of his opinions instead.)While name-calling and inflammatory statements are usually sure-fire ways to pep-up radio audiences and magazine circulation (wonder if this entered DPM's mind also?), they don't work if you are trying to advance a particular course of action, as one soon learns when taking a class on writing. Possibly, the most important rule of persuasive argument is to not insult your audience (or potential audience). Written down here, this rule appears so obvious that it sounds stupid to even mention it, but all of you have encountered speakers and writers who are painfully oblivious to this and then wonder why they can't convince anyone to accept their ideas. Obviously, if Kneiling was serious about getting railroaders to try some of his concepts he seemed to be going at it completely backwards.Another important rule of persuasive argument is to be sure all your facts are totally correct. Nothing destroys the credibility of a presenter faster than errors of fact. One error makes, in the audience's mind, all the rest of the presenter's facts suspect, even if true. Exaggerations, stereotypes, and similar "stretchers" are in the erroneous fact category also and have no place in persuasive argument. Looking at Kneiling's comments above shows him, by resorting to stereotypes, guilty of factual errors that ruin his credibility. Railroaders, being human, run the gamut from top-notch to clinkers, a fact that Kneiling missed or chose to ignore.All of the above assumes (as the previous posters on this topic have also assumed) that John Kneiling was actually serious about what he wrote in his columns, rather than a playing grand joke at Trains' readers expense. Far fetched? Think I've gone around the bend? Then let's consider this:Rush Limbaugh again—does he really believe (and advocate) everything he says on his show? Or is he just tossing out a bunch of junk to keep people listening so his ratings (and advertising rates) stay high? All I can say is that if I was in his position the temptation to throw verbal gasoline on a fire and watch the ensuing fireball would be irresistible.Now, let's look at John Kneiling. Very little of his background ever appeared in "Trains" but I do know that he had both an engineering degree and a Professional Engineer registration. Speaking from experience, I can say that to obtain both requires intelligence and a fair bit of hard work. Also, the pittance he received for his columns (and occasional articles) certainly wouldn't support him (and his family if he had one) so his consulting engineer work was his main source of income. As a consulting engineer, he would (or should) have been acutely aware of the laws and regulations regarding professional liability, contracts, permits, professional registration, etc. He may even have been an expert witness in a court case. All of this certainly seems to indicate that he knew far more about the legal system than implied by his columns. Finally, his designs for the integral train were sound from an engineering standpoint; his book "Integral Train Systems" explained the concept in a clear and rational manner also.The above seems to indicate a rational, intelligent person that no one would associate with the raving wacko tone of his columns; they usually started fairly tamely, but then got wilder as they progressed. Here's my (wild) idea for the discrepancy: Given that he did have a big ego, I can picture him sitting down at his typewriter, tossing back a shot or two to loosen the thought processes, and then typing whatever goofiness came into his mind, chuckling all the while at the thought of the "Trains" readers reacting in serious outrage to his writing. Well, why not? Given a free hand, wouldn't you? And could DPM have been in on the game also? After all, John Kneiling certainly kept "Trains" magazine in everyone's mind, and vice versa, considering it's been almost 30 years since Kneiling's last column appeared and we're still talking about him.Unfortunately, we will never know the real story. But, I think it's a fun way to remember him as the great jokester rather than as the wild-eyed, off-the-wall type his columns implied.RIP JohnKurt Hayek
Knieling was an educated engineer and specialized in transportation and was paid to present his theories culled from his experiences whether you understood or agreed with him or not; his main aim was to get railroaders in particular and other in general to stop thinking 19th Century railroading and make necessary changes for the future. . Limbaugh is an entertainer being paid to be obnoxious by his employer and his patrons. ( I will not make snide remarks pertaining to Limbaugh and the 19th Century.) His aim is to influence people toward his political and moral values as prescribed by his patrons and by his audience. That's the only comparison that can be made between these two. The media differences, the topics, the audiences, are all so completely different. I did a talk show on radio and in no way could I be compared to Knieling (nor Limbaugh for that matter) because of the venue and the narrow topic of Knieling. Here is one place where we cannot put politics into railroading.
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John G Kneiling had after his name PE, consulting engineer. He was a professional engineer certified by the National Society of Professional Engineers. He not only holds an engineering degree but has worked under the supervision of another PE for four years before he can sit for an extensive battery of tests for certification and state licensing. You can go to the National Society of Professional Engineers website and read more.
It might be helpful to remember the context of the time he was writing. The guys on the top rungs of railroads almost always had a operating background. Why? That's where the economic leaverage was. The traffic was what it was. In a regulated environment, there wasn't much anyone could do to move the needle much, so you focused on the cost side of things. The one, big cost item was train crew cost, so the focus was on train productivity - i.e. larger and larger trains.
When all attempts at fixing the problems with regulation came to nearly naught in the 1950s, RRs could not attract the "best and the brightest", but generally had care-taker style CEOs. There were some exeptions - there were "true believers" like Perlman, but in general, status quo was the rule. Tweaking the current state was all that was happening.
The problem was, the whole industry was failing fundamentally and you couldn't "tweak" your way out of it. The whole game had to change. It couldn't be "incrementally reduce the cost of moving the traffic that shows up". It had to be more fundamental - "what needs to move from A to B and how can I do it an make a buck?"
Knieling was just trying to shock anyone who would listen into seeing this for what it was. RRs had BIG problems that needed BIG solutions. He threw quite a few out there hoping just a few pieces would stick.
Now, post Staggers, RRs think about marketing as much as operations and CEOs are not generally operating men. I think Knieling would be pleased, but I'm sure he'd still be rattling cages about things like lack of penetration into the short haul intermodal market, the high cost of intermodal terminals and how much value the RRs give away to 3rd party logisitic providers.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
aricat John G Kneiling had after his name PE, consulting engineer. He was a professional engineer certified by the National Society of Professional Engineers. He not only holds an engineering degree but has worked under the supervision of another PE for four years before he can sit for an extensive battery of tests for certification and state licensing. You can go to the National Society of Professional Engineers website and read more.
Kurt/ sandiego's post above got me to thinking:
I suspect the "professional bomb-thrower" here was not Kneiling, but instead one David P. Morgan. He was the one who hired Kneiling to write columns with 'sound bites' such as "just ignore the regulators" / "just go ahead and break the [misbegotten] law" of economic regulations, etc. But Morgan also hired George W. Hilton to write - and then published - several lengthy scholarly articles on the history and economic effects of ICC regulation, concluding with this one:
Both advocated for the same result, but with different methods - one rabble-rousing, the other more rational and well-reasoned. Orchestrating them both was Morgan. At the time, that result was heresy - many (including my own father) thought the ICC was a necessary and permanent part of the transportation industry. But as events a few years later showed, that wasn't so. The Staggers Act essentially deregulated surface transportation, and then in the mid-1990's the ICC was replaced by the STB.
To some degree, all 3 men must have known that their efforts to that end were in the tradition of 'cathedral builders' - starting something that likely would not be finished in their lifetimes, and that they would have to depend on others coming after them to see through to completion. Fortunately, Morgan lived long enough to see deregulation and the start of the what now seems to have been the next-to-last round of mergers; and Kneiling and Hilton lived long enough to see the industry take its present shape (I presume Hilton is still alive).
I found some other comments about JGK on a forum for the Erie-Lackawanna Railroad. Most relate to the acrimony between him and William White, the E-L's CEO in the mid-1960's, over adopting container trains, etc. Here are the links to those comments (hopefully in chronological order):
Re: "John Kneiling Professional Iconoclast":
http://lists.railfan.net/erielack-digest/201206/msg00152.html
Re: "John Kneiling and EL":
http://lists.railfan.net/erielack-digest/201206/msg00153.html
http://lists.railfan.net/erielack-digest/201206/msg00156.html
http://lists.railfan.net/erielack-digest/201206/msg00160.html
Does anybody know if George W. Hilton is still with us? Certainly it's been a long time between bylines; and, as far as Trains is concerned, he seems to have fallen into the same black hole as JK.
I actually met Hilton once, in Cheyenne, in 1966 or '67, recognizing him as he walked down the platform. He was stretching his legs while No. 5 was being worked. I can't remember what he was doing on the mail train instead of one of the streamliners.
He seemed surprised at being recognized, which is always an endearing trait in a person of his accomplishments.
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