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"Hobbist or Terrorist?" in Time Magazine

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My guess is that a dedicated saboteur or "terrorist" does not need to take pictures to figure out a nice juicy target. They can get all the data they need just by reading posts on the Internet... or by a one month, off the newstand issue of Trains. For example, last month I got to read all about the Hell's Gate bridge, complete with wonderful photographs, professionally taken, and structural information. During World War II the Germans landed two teams of saboteurs... and part of their mission included railroad sabotage. (One of their targets was, I believe, Horseshoe Curve.) They didn't do recconnaiscance beforehand to know what was vulnerable. They knew already. It was fortunate that they got caught before they had a chance to do anything. On the other hand, the Germans during WW II had a pretty efficient security system over the railroads. Yards were fenced off and access was restricted. The tracks were heavily patrolled. Bridges were guarded. There were huge organizations within the German Army dedicated to keeping the railroads in running condition. All that was defeated by the French resistance right before D-Day, with a lot of help by the Air Force. I don't need to take pictures of the NEC to determine when and where a train is going to be at a certain point in time. All I have to do is go to the AMTRAK web page. Or SEPTA, or Metro North. During the first Gulf War I was getting ready to go to Saudi Arabia. I was on duty in a National Guard headquarters. One of my buddies there needed to know where a military shipment was that was going by rail. He knew I was a railfan. I picked up the phone, called the local tower, identified myself as an Army Captain (which I was at the time)... and got switched over to Southern Pacific's customer service representative, who told me where the shipment was right then (stuck in El Paso, sorry, the train's running late) and when I could expect the train to reach Tucson (around noon the next day.) I never went near the rails. It took person (or persons) unknown a set of jumper cables and some heavy duty wrenches to derail the Sunset Limited outside Hyder, AZ not long after that. No one to this day knows who did it. Were they terrorists or vandals? No one knows. It's the very nature of railroads that you can't keep every inch of them under surveillance every second. Railfans aren't the problem. The sad state of our transportation infrastructure is. It's cheaper and more visible to stick a security guard on a rail platform than to fix the real problem. If I can disrupt high speed passenger service on the NEC just by sticking a fake "bomb" on the tracks, how well can I do if I have real explosives? Will the Feds fund electrification of alternate routes? Nope. They are too busy funding security guards checking sneakers at airports. They are too busy determining how much pollution a locomotive emits rather than determining how important the cargo is that locomotive is pulling. IMHO, the Feds are wasting time on "all show" and ignoring the real vulnerabilites of the railroads. It's cheaper to publicize how "security" is increased by hassling railfans. It's not so cheap to fix the embarrassing lack of infrastructure that makes the railroad so vulnerable in the first place. Erik
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