Bucyrus,
I looked at the subject thread once early on and have avoided it since becuase I had no interest in it.
After looking at the last two pages, I have no idea why the thread was locked. If someone is uninterested they can simply not follow the thread.
I am of the opinion that "politically incorrect" statements and threads that generate politically incorrect statements are more likely to be locked than other threads. I once had a few discussions with some of the moderators and made specific suggestions to Kalmbach for changes to the "political" rule. No changes were made, but the moderators seemed to be more tollerant for a while.
Somebody got upset about something in the locked thread, but who, and over what are not clear to me.
Mac
The comments ran the gamut of opinion, same as here, but with a lot less detailed discussion of facts and legalities, plus a whole lot of rudeness and name-calling/flaming. But the Trib let it be. The question (as I attempted to ask on the Question thread) is why did the accident thread on the Trains General forum need to be locked? And why? And aside from a few of us, does anybody even care?
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
We have a whole list of rules to follow on this forum. So when a thread that is complying with the rules generates enough interest to run to 16 pages, 237 posts, and almost 3000 views, and is locked with no explanation of why; I have to assume that it is because the ideas being expressed are offensive to either the moderators or forum members who cannot tolerate such ideas.
It is obvious that the problem with that thread is that it was running against the grade crossing orthodoxy. It is perfectly fine to have a thread run on endlessly, dancing on the grave of some grade crossing victim. This is the industry template, and most railfans embrace it. But when the signals fail, it amounts to a fly in the ointment of this orthodoxy. And that leads into dangerous ideas that challenge the orthodoxy.
If you want to see an example of this orthodoxy, look at the three pages of comments following this Chicago Tribune report:
http://discussions.chicagotribune.com/20/chinews/chibrknews-2-cars-crash-into-freight-train-on-south-side-4-injured-20110214/10?page=2
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