WORST RAILROADS

[Anonymous]

I will pobably catch heck for this but, I believe the Elgin Joliet and Eastern is the worst run as far as profitabilty. This railroad has a outside track around Chicago and connects with every railroad going into Chicago. With Chicago being such a bottleneck you would think the managers of this company would exploit this and use it to make money. There actions do not exibit this. Example: Several years ago they ripped up all if not most of its double track. Now all of its train movements are limited to single track one train operation. High prices: Sources tell me that the EJ&E charges such enormous switching and train movement prices that even the most time cridical frieght could not aford to be moved across it.
The EJ&E has the potential to be a very profitable railroad. The managment acts like it does not want to be botherd by customers.
TIM A

[cabforward]

using profits to determine a r.rs.' standing is a narrow way of categorizing a r.r., or any enterprise..

a small r.r. can be more profitable than a large one, due to customers handled, age of eqpt., etc..

many other factors can be used in a r.rs. best/worst standing determination: employee & customer satisfaction, safety violations, increase in new customers, decrease in losing current customers..

to say 1 r.r. is the most profitable because it made the most money can be deceiving.. a smaller r.r. could be more profitable due to proportions.. a larger r.r. may appear to make more money, but they may have spent much more money in fuel, or eqpt. repairs or in poor use of employee resources (poor organization of extra board, excessive turnover, etc.).. if using profitable by money earned, the r.r. must be analyzed to reveal how much it spent to attract revenue..

did the r.r. buy too much loco power at the wrong time? did it hire too many workers which it had to furlough later? many businesses have gone bankrupt which were profitable, due to unforeseen consequences of mgmt. decisions or bad weather..

profitabilility does not insure stability, nor longevity..

a r.r. could be deemed profitable because it owns subsidiaries which do very well.. the sub's profit is accrued to the r.r.. though the r.r. may not do well, it rightly claims it is profitable because its sub is profitable.. of course, this info is part of the financial statement and everybody can see that.. but the point is, the r.r. can maintain or improve its corporate standing because the sub's profit is counted as the r.rs.' profit..

there are many excursion trains, and studying them could show some surprising facts about profits and revenue.. the cost per mile of hauling people or freight might turn up a short line or an excursion train as a very profitable business, comparable to a much larger system..

[Anonymous]

Am-trash...
ooops, I mean Amtrak.
No wonder they're loosing so much, they're very unsafe trains. Alot of their safety equipment isn't even secured. Even after 9-11 there is still crow bars laying around willy-nilly here or maybe over there...who knows really? YIKES!

[JeremyB]

I saw a post which said "Top 3 railroads",okay what are the worst railroads in service today.And by that I mean what are the railroads today which generate the least amount of revenue.
Jeremy
Thanks for any input.