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[quote]QUOTE: Originally posted by edblysard And exactly who forced these people to build the "small" plants? I would surmise they see a profit in doing so, regardless of who, or how their inbound and outbound products move. Oh, and Dave, the days of one and two car load railroading by the class 1 roads is gone...been gone for quite a while. Just like your Montana wheat whining, it will not come back. Now, a regional or short line might take a chance on it, but none of the Class 1s want, or need single car load business. Or is this just another one of your threads designed to allow you to bring up your imagined moral obligation of railroads to help the "little guy"...and expound on your theory of railroads being conspirators in a nation wide scheme to control everything and screw over the little folks like yourself? (of course it is!) And I love the fact that you are quoting Trains magazine….in one of your other rabid postings, you dismissed the value of Trains magazine when it was quoted by someone who didn’t agree with you…If I remember correctly, you said something along the lines that Trains magazine was a railfan magazine, and that you took nothing published in it seriously, that they (Trains) were nothing but a instrument of and pandered to the railroads, and that the people who wrote for it were simply mouthpieces for the rail industry. And now, you use the same magazine to back up your nonsense, and manage to alter the writers words just enough in your “almost his exact words” quote to...well, most of us are used to you selectively editing quotes to fit your needs. Guess switching horses in mid stream is normal for you, huh….isn’t this sort of like sleeping with the enemy? Besides the Milwaukee, is there any thing a railroad does, or any railroad for that matter, that you like? [/quote] Well, if you want you can look back through your TRAINS mags to find the exact quote, then you might have a shred of justification to criticize me for referencing an item in TRAINS to provide evidence that BN and UP willingly turned down short haul grain business in Eastern Washington. Your problem is you can't discern between an op-ed piece and a writer's observations. The fact of the matter is, sometimes the items in TRAINS are on the point, other times they are way off base. Just like most other mags and papers out there, each has a variety of writers with a variety of opinions and observations. If I agree with what a TRAINS writer has said, I'll say so. If I don't, I'll also opine my critique. That's what independent thinkers do, as opposed to a bunch of yes men like you. However, if you agree with everything that's ever been written in TRAINS..........(insert brownnose smilie here) The point of the Railway Age article is that requirements for unit train compatible operations for ethanol plant proposals will limit the number of such plants that can be built. It is all part of a larger terminal consolidation program by Class I's that have resulted in more traffic having to switch to trucks to get their goods to market. I have pointed out time and again that the beneficiaries of unit trains/terminal consolidation are limited to railroad operating dynamics, and not to shippers nor necessarily the railroad's bottom line. Rail shippers who used to have carload and small lot car service now have to truck their product to the unit train facility at significant distances away, so this shift away from carload to unit train has caused an increase in their overall transportation costs. Consolidation has also caused the railroads to dimini***heir customer base as some shift to trucks and highways for the entire haul, bypassing the railroad megaterminals, while others simply shut down and either spend their investment money on dotcoms or on Chinese factories that make what used to be made in the USA. The long haul over the road trucking sector is purely an inadvertent invention of the railroad industry.
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