I don't think the passenger trains of the 1890's were faster generally than those of today. If they were, it is a sad commentary on 120 years of railroading progress. An example of fast back then was the ATSF California Ltd, which took only 60 hours in 1892, Chicago to LA..
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
schlimm And the airbrake? In widespread use for 20 years on passenger cars before mandated adoption on freight cars. Why such a long delay? .... But as it turned out, adoption, though initially costly, saved a lot of labor and allowed for longer trains.
And the airbrake? In widespread use for 20 years on passenger cars before mandated adoption on freight cars. Why such a long delay? .... But as it turned out, adoption, though initially costly, saved a lot of labor and allowed for longer trains.
The difference was probably at least partly due to the speeds of the two types of trains. Many passenger trains were fast, sometimes even faster than today, while the freights mostly plodded along. The traditional "100-mile day" that formed the basis for train crew wages, if converted to an 8 hour day, matches an average speed of 12.5 mph. The faster the speed, the more important it is to have fast acting brakes. I suggest early application to passenger equipment and locomotives was much easier to justify to management of the time, especially when the fleet was semi-captive and far smaller than the freight car roster.
Air brakes certainly allowed for longer trains, but length was also constrained by the small locomotives of the era.
John
There is another reason to conclude that the coupler mandate may not have been necessary to complete the conversion within seven years. By the time of the 1893 mandate, the 20% conversion was possibly sufficient to propel the industry forward to completion as quickly as possible. The reason this may have been the case was that the conversion phase required coupling MCB couplers to link and pin couplers, which caused more accidents and delays than the most dangerous period of the link and pin phase. So once they had a sufficient number of cars converted, this mating of the differing coupler types grew into a formidable problem, creating a strong incentive to get the conversion job done.
schlimm And the airbrake? In widespread use for 20 years on passenger cars before mandated adoption on freight cars. Why such a long delay?
And the airbrake? In widespread use for 20 years on passenger cars before mandated adoption on freight cars. Why such a long delay?
I don't know about the air brake mandate. But both the coupler and air brake conversions were complicated by the need to maintain car compatibilty and use both the old and the new on the same trains during the changeover.
This has always been a problem with interchageability standards in widespread use. There was also a considerable risk in getting ahead of the natural pace in making a committment to adopt a certain version of these improvements because a better mousetrap might win out, and leave your attempt to get ahead of the game as being an expensive mistake. Whatever invention won the contest required eveyone to adopt it. So it was very risky to try to get too far out in front.
And the airbrake? In widespread use for 20 years on passenger cars before mandated adoption on freight cars. Why such a long delay? If not for the mandate, one wonders how many more years it would have taken? But as it turned out, adoption, though initially costly, saved a lot of labor and allowed for longer trains. Short-sighted management?
schlimm The men who worked after [the coupler conversion], who saved many lives and fingers compared to those before would see things differently than you do.
The men who worked after [the coupler conversion], who saved many lives and fingers compared to those before would see things differently than you do.
I don’t see why you conclude that. Where have I ever implied that the switch to MCB couplers was undesirable for any reason? Where have I suggested that I do not see the injuries to trainmen as having been a problem?
A couple posts above, you clearly implied that the industry was negligent for being indifferent to the injuries and refusing to adopt the Janney coupler for twenty years while it was available to solve the injury problem. I dispute that. You said it was ready to be put into use in 1873, but the railroads did not apply it at all until the government mandate of 1893. So you implied that the railroads were indifferent to the injuries for twenty years, and would have continued their indifference had the government not stepped in with the mandate.
Yet the MCB coupler was not ready to apply until 1888, and not adequately perfected until 1893. The mandate was made in 1893 because the pace of conversion seemed too slow. Maybe it was, but we will never know how quickly the conversion would have been accomplished without the mandate. The only way to have judged the pace of conversion was by how much took place between 1888 and about 1992. And as I mentioned above, the Janney coupler was fraught with developmental problems during that four year phase. Those problems were undoubtedly somewhat responsible for holding back the rate of conversion.
So overall, I see no way that history proves that the coupler mandate was necessary or speeded up the conversion. It is possible that it did, but no more than a possibility. I also do not see any analogy between the coupler mandate and the PTC mandate. I would say that the burden of complying with the coupler mandate was a walk in the woods compared to the PTC mandate.
"Janney sold his patent rights to the McClonway & Torley Company of Pittsburgh in 1878. Nine years later, the Master Car Builder Association chose the Janney coupler over 40 other proposals as the railroad industry standard. The latest design had a huge impact. Before widespread adoption of the Janney coupler, nearly 40% of railyard injuries and deaths were attributed to coupling accidents. By 1902, only 4% of railroad accidents were due to car coupling. Besides drastically reducing brakeman injuries, the Janney coupler also helped increase the efficiency of railroad switching operations." (from ASME).
Pretty clearly, there was a massive drop in the numbers of accidents involving couplers, even though there were more employees and cars. The men who worked after, who saved many lives and fingers compared to those before would see things differently than you do.And the airbrake? In widespread use for 20 years on passenger cars before mandated adoption. Why the delay?
schlimmThe Janney coupler was available starting after 1873, but the rails had no program to adopt. until the mandate of the SAA of 1893. there was a seven year grace period to implement, which the rails did by 1900. Nothing complicated about this piece of history.
Nothing complicated about this piece of history.
I am reading about this in The American Railroad Freight Car by John H. White, Jr. He devotes 28 large format pages to the evolution from link and pin couplers to Janney couplers. I do see the mandate of 1893 and the 7 years to fully implement, but I do not see the Janney coupler being available in 1873.
Janney began working on his coupler design in 1865. He received his first patent in 1868, but that one was a dead end. He received a second patent in 1873, but this only marked the beginning of a long period of testing and refining the design. The railroad industry was besieged with contestants in the coupler inventors’ sweepstakes, and Janney was just one of them in the crowd. During the 1880s there were a lot of coupler test trials conducted. In 1887, there were over 4000 coupler patents being evaluated.
It was not until 1888 that the MCB adopted the Janney coupler as the standard, calling it the MCB coupler. Janney’s design was then placed in the public domain so it could be manufactured by many different coupler manufacturers. By 1891, there were nineteen different companies manufacturing Janney couplers. Even at this date, the Janney coupler was far from perfected. Mr. White says, “It proved to be a weak link and was very prone to failure.” In 1891 the Burlington reported 540 broken couplers plus 2,400 failed knuckles.
At this time, other than the coupler mating elements, all of the rest of the mechanism varied from one manufacturer to the next. This included the unlocking mechanism which required trainmen to learn all of the operational differences, and to get between cars at night to study the couplers in order to learn how to unlock them. This lack of standardization also required railroads to inventory parts for all the various non-standardized mechanisms.
It was not until 1893 that steel replaced malleable iron, thus making the couplers strong enough to stand up in service. Oddly enough there was some counterforce to the adoption of the MCB coupler coming from those who were safety advocates expected to endorse it. Some preferred some of the earlier couplers that were developed as safer link and pin couplers. There was a belief the radically new couplers introduced hazards. This fear was somewhat confirmed by the fact that coupler accidents peaked in 1893 with roughly 20% of the car fleet converted. This rise in accidents was attributed to the safety compromise involved with coupling MCB couplers with link and pin couplers, which was accomplished by a slotted knuckle on the MCB coupler to receive the end of a link to be pinned to the knuckle.
So, overall, I conclude that the mandate of 1893 roughly coincided with the availability of the practically perfected MCB coupler. And it was not available at all before 1888.
In a word, yes. Having a mandate helped also to decide on one design out of many competing ones. This was the Master Car Builder one. the new couplers were incompatible with link and pin, and so a quick transition was needed.
schlimmThe Janney coupler was available starting after 1873, but the rails had no program to adopt. until the mandate of the SAA of 1893. there was a seven year grace period to implement, which the rails did by 1900.
Air brakes were in general use for 20 years on passenger cars before the mandate forced the rails to speed up, which they managed to complete in about 2-3 years.
The Janney coupler was available starting after 1873, but the rails had no program to adopt. until the mandate of the SAA of 1893. there was a seven year grace period to implement, which the rails did by 1900.
When people say the mandates were needed to force the railroads to adopt automatic couplers and air brakes, that can mean one of two things. In absence of a mandate, either the railroads would not move quickly enough to adopt these improvements—or—the railroads would have refused to begin the adoption of these improvements. Which one of these two explanations is true?
Was the application of Janney Couplers and air brakes voluntarily under way prior to the creation of the mandates for them?
If so, is it accurate to say that railroads would have fully applied these improvements over time on their own volition? If so, is it accurate to say that the mandates were predicated on the belief that the conversion to automatic couplers and air brakes needed to be speeded up and completed sooner than it would have if no mandate were applied?
I understand. I guess my point was that even with a proven technology, it took 20 years and an act of Congress to get the rails to adopt those two safety devices.
schlimm henry6 Air brakes, automatic couplers, signal system, interlockings, steel as opposed to cast iron, steel as opposed to wood. Just a few of the items that follow this blueprint. And not mentioned, while PTC is pushed for passenger train safety, railroad management must also understand that a derailment costs them money in damages to plant and equipment, lost cargo, and time lost in not being able to operate their railroad. They are short sighted as long as the status quo remains together. In re the Janney coupler, there might be a lesson to be learned: In 1893, satisfied that an automatic coupler could meet the demands of commercial railroad operations and, at the same time, be manipulated safely, Congress passed the safety Appliance Act. Its success in promoting switchyard safety was stunning. Between 1877 and 1887, approximately 38% of all railworker accidents involved coupling. That percentage fell as the railroads began to replace link and pin couplers with automatic couplers. By 1902, only two years after the SAA's effective date, coupling accidents constituted only 4% of all employee accidents. Coupler-related accidents dropped from nearly 11,000 in 1892 to just over 2,000 in 1902, even though the number of railroad employees steadily increased during that decade. In re automatic air brakes "the Westinghouse" the same: "The rapid application of air brakes to passenger trains contrasts sharp-ly with the diffusion of Westinghouse's invention through the freight branch of the American railroad industry. Air brakes eventually became standard appliances in freight as well as passenger service, but they gained this status only after considerable delay. As many as twenty years after Westinghouse introduced the air brake, few railroads had equipped their freight trains with the device. While many railroads responded unenthusiastically to the quick-action air brake, public interest in the device increased rapidly. Humanitarian reformers concerned with the safety of railroad workers campaigned for legislation requiring railroads to equip freight trains with continuous brakes and automatic couplers. Three months later the ICC received a similar request signed by over ten thousand members of the Brother-hood of Railroad Brakemen, a recently formed union that enabled brakemen for the first time to voice their grievances collectively. These petition drives attracted considerable attention, and the campaign for railroad safety rapidly acquired the support of a public that harbored strong opposition to the power of the railroads. Faced with this public pressure, in 1890 Congress began holding hearings on several bills that proposed federal laws on railroad safety equipment. Most railroads openly opposed such legislation and claimed that they would adopt the safety appliances without interference from Congress. Even a few superintendents of motive power from railroads that had ordered large numbers of air brakes testified against the pro-posed laws. The railroads soon recognized, however, that the growing public support for legislation dwarfed any opposition they could muster. By the time of the 1892 presidential campaign, when the candidates from both major parties advocated safety legislation, most railroad managers testifying at the hearings concentrated on assuring that the eventual law designated desirable standards for equipment. Railroads succeeded in this aim, and the Safety Appliance Act that became law in 1893 effectively required the railroads to meet MCBA standards for continuous brakes and automatic couplers by 1898." from: Air Brakes for Freight Trains: Technological Innovation in the American Railroad Industry, 1869-1900 STEVEN W. USSELMAN So, without the SAA, the railroads would not have adopted either advance on their own, or at best, dragged their heels more years.
henry6 Air brakes, automatic couplers, signal system, interlockings, steel as opposed to cast iron, steel as opposed to wood. Just a few of the items that follow this blueprint. And not mentioned, while PTC is pushed for passenger train safety, railroad management must also understand that a derailment costs them money in damages to plant and equipment, lost cargo, and time lost in not being able to operate their railroad. They are short sighted as long as the status quo remains together.
Air brakes, automatic couplers, signal system, interlockings, steel as opposed to cast iron, steel as opposed to wood. Just a few of the items that follow this blueprint.
And not mentioned, while PTC is pushed for passenger train safety, railroad management must also understand that a derailment costs them money in damages to plant and equipment, lost cargo, and time lost in not being able to operate their railroad. They are short sighted as long as the status quo remains together.
While many railroads responded unenthusiastically to the quick-action air brake, public interest in the device increased rapidly. Humanitarian reformers concerned with the safety of railroad workers campaigned for legislation requiring railroads to equip freight trains with continuous brakes and automatic couplers. Three months later the ICC received a similar request signed by over ten thousand members of the Brother-hood of Railroad Brakemen, a recently formed union that enabled brakemen for the first time to voice their grievances collectively. These petition drives attracted considerable attention, and the campaign for railroad safety rapidly acquired the support of a public that harbored strong opposition to the power of the railroads. Faced with this public pressure, in 1890 Congress began holding hearings on several bills that proposed federal laws on railroad safety equipment. Most railroads openly opposed such legislation and claimed that they would adopt the safety appliances without interference from Congress. Even a few superintendents of motive power from railroads that had ordered large numbers of air brakes testified against the pro-posed laws. The railroads soon recognized, however, that the growing public support for legislation dwarfed any opposition they could muster. By the time of the 1892 presidential campaign, when the candidates from both major parties advocated safety legislation, most railroad managers testifying at the hearings concentrated on assuring that the eventual law designated desirable standards for equipment. Railroads succeeded in this aim, and the Safety Appliance Act that became law in 1893 effectively required the railroads to meet MCBA standards for continuous brakes and automatic couplers by 1898."
from: Air Brakes for Freight Trains: Technological Innovation in the American Railroad Industry, 1869-1900 STEVEN W. USSELMAN
BucyrusWell, if there is anything close to a consensus, it appears to be the premise the mandate deadline cannot be met.
The AAR and FRA are in agreement on this.
-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/)
Deggesty As oltmannd said, "The railroads decided to all buy the WABTEC system. QED" And, as Lion said, "There may not even be consensus among vendors that would produce such a system. Of interlocking plants, GRS has a system US&S has a system, they are not necessarily compatible, and some railroads will use both. I expect the same with PTC. Yet a train must be able transverse all different systems." It was advantageous that all the roads adopted the WABTEC system, so that if a foreign car developed brake trouble, it probably could be repaired no matter which road it was on. (Unlike a problem that Amtrak ran into when it ran SFe cars on other roads and the steam air conditioning developed problems--men who had no trouble handling electromechanical or Waukesha systems had no knowledge, much less experience with the steam system.) As to the use of either US&S or GRS interlocking, interlockings are not interchanged from road to road. (I think that Lion added an "n" to traverse; did he take it from a dinning car?) Totally as an aside, electromechanical was not a good system to use on cars that regularly sat for a good length of time--the combines used on the Silver Meteor between Wildwood and St. Petersburg were never really cooled since the batteries had no opportunity to be fully charged; a flagman apologized to me for the excessive warmth in the car when I rode from Tampa to St. Pete one February.
As oltmannd said, "The railroads decided to all buy the WABTEC system. QED" And, as Lion said, "There may not even be consensus among vendors that would produce such a system. Of interlocking plants, GRS has a system US&S has a system, they are not necessarily compatible, and some railroads will use both. I expect the same with PTC. Yet a train must be able transverse all different systems."
It was advantageous that all the roads adopted the WABTEC system, so that if a foreign car developed brake trouble, it probably could be repaired no matter which road it was on. (Unlike a problem that Amtrak ran into when it ran SFe cars on other roads and the steam air conditioning developed problems--men who had no trouble handling electromechanical or Waukesha systems had no knowledge, much less experience with the steam system.)
As to the use of either US&S or GRS interlocking, interlockings are not interchanged from road to road. (I think that Lion added an "n" to traverse; did he take it from a dinning car?)
Totally as an aside, electromechanical was not a good system to use on cars that regularly sat for a good length of time--the combines used on the Silver Meteor between Wildwood and St. Petersburg were never really cooled since the batteries had no opportunity to be fully charged; a flagman apologized to me for the excessive warmth in the car when I rode from Tampa to St. Pete one February.
To be totally fair, a lot of the ground for PTC was plowed with the AAR ATCS specs (here) and BN ARES demo. The communication scheme and radio messaging logic have pretty much been worked out. In fact, ATCS spec 200 is in use lots of places as CTC code line.
However, even if you have solid "form/fit/function" specs in place - which the industry does not - you'd still have to do interoperabiltity testing between vendors. It would be pretty onerous since the number of pieces of equipment that carry "vital" information increases from just existing track circuits and interlocking equipment to include radios, back office computers, and locomotive on-board computers. Heck, even the GPS and traction motor speed probe become "vital" as the locomotive needs to know where it is all the time, without fail.
And, then even if each RR picked a different vendor, you'd have all sorts of issues making sure each vendor's locomotive hardware and soft ware played nicely with all the other roads communications.
So, with the tight timeline, the only way to have a fighting chance to implement in time is to pick a single vendor. In this case, WABTEC. Of course it's not fair - but there is no time to be fair.
The really big fly in the ointment of interoperability is between Amtrak's NEC and the frt roads. Amtrak's ACSES (and the commuter roads' cousins) is totally different from frt RR PTC schemes. There is no real interoperability - you'd have to have dual systems and make sure the cut in/ cut out occurred at the right point.
Johnny
BroadwayLion AND THERE WOULD BE NO PENALTY BRAKE IF THE CREW WAS OPERATING THE TRAIN PROPERLY IN THE FIRST PLACE! Roar
AND THERE WOULD BE NO PENALTY BRAKE IF THE CREW WAS OPERATING THE TRAIN PROPERLY IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Roar
Some of our engines are equipped with the Leader system. It's designed to "assist" the engineer in running the train in the most fuel efficient manner. It doesn't "see" block signals or other trains, but does know where the speed restrictions are. The version we have assists by giving prompts on what to do. Notch up or down on the throttle, go to dynamics and how much or little to use, etc. It will even tell you to set air.
Many times when approaching a speed restriction, it will tell me to use air. (It's funny when it says to set 6.5 lbs of air, since the minimum amount I can make with the current valves is about 8 lbs.) I'm using dynamics to slow down, have the train under control, but the computer says to use air. I don't and still safely comply with the restriction, even if the computer doesn't seem to think so. I imagine if it could, it would want to give me a penalty brake.
I've heard from our Fuel Masters group that Leader is on the way out. It's not saving the amount of fuel they thought it would. I like the terrain map and speed projections it gives, but I disable the assist prompts. It does OK some places, but not others. People following the prompts have torn trains up when the system was first deployed.
Jeff
BroadwayLion There probably can be no consensus even within one railroad let alone among railroads. There may not even be consensus among vendors that would produce such a system. Of interlocking plants, GRS has a system US&S has a system, they are not necessarily compatible, and some railroads will use both. I expect the same with PTC. Yet a train must be able transverse all different systems. MAYBE THE MODELERS DO HAVE IT RIGHT: NMRA set standards for DCC, and everybody (well almost everybody)) fell into line and built to these specifications. ARA needs to do the same: NAME the standards and let builders build. ROAR
There probably can be no consensus even within one railroad let alone among railroads.
There may not even be consensus among vendors that would produce such a system. Of interlocking plants, GRS has a system US&S has a system, they are not necessarily compatible, and some railroads will use both. I expect the same with PTC.
Yet a train must be able transverse all different systems.
MAYBE THE MODELERS DO HAVE IT RIGHT:
NMRA set standards for DCC, and everybody (well almost everybody)) fell into line and built to these specifications.
ARA needs to do the same: NAME the standards and let builders build.
ROAR
Ever since the mandate was announced - the carriers and the AAR have been working on developing the applicable standards for the various aspects of the PTC systems - PTC is not just a single piece of equipment - it encompasses multiple pieces of hardware that must function in myriad of operating situations on a variety of equipment types and a virtually unlimited variety of train consists - everything from high speed Acelas (and anything that comes after them) to 20K ton unit trains and 12K foot intermodal and the run of the mill 15K ton mixed freight manifest.
When the standards must cover such a wide variety of locomotives, trains and forseeable operating conditions - the standards must be developed with care - what is reasonable in one situation is accident happening in another situation. Standards for real world railroads are much more involved than they are in the model railroad world.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Well, if there is anything close to a consensus, it appears to be the premise the mandate deadline cannot be met.
Bucyrus oltmanndBucyrusGenerally, I must conclude that there is no consensus within the industry on any particular position regarding PTC or the PTC mandate. You discount what Ed Hamberger said to Congress last week? Just his opinion? Bucyrus I am not convinced that the industry holds a consensus that they should not fight the mandate because they are better off saving their capital to fight re-regulation. You think they should fight a two front war? PTC is an expensive annoyance. I am not taking any position as to whether they should fight the mandate. All I am saying is that I do not believe that there is a consensus in the railroad industry that they will refrain from fighting the PTC mandate because they need the strength to fight re-regulation. It sounds plausible, but what is the basis of this conclusion? I don't discount anything that Ed Hamberger said.
oltmanndBucyrusGenerally, I must conclude that there is no consensus within the industry on any particular position regarding PTC or the PTC mandate. You discount what Ed Hamberger said to Congress last week? Just his opinion? Bucyrus I am not convinced that the industry holds a consensus that they should not fight the mandate because they are better off saving their capital to fight re-regulation. You think they should fight a two front war? PTC is an expensive annoyance.
BucyrusGenerally, I must conclude that there is no consensus within the industry on any particular position regarding PTC or the PTC mandate.
You discount what Ed Hamberger said to Congress last week? Just his opinion?
Bucyrus I am not convinced that the industry holds a consensus that they should not fight the mandate because they are better off saving their capital to fight re-regulation.
You think they should fight a two front war? PTC is an expensive annoyance.
I am not taking any position as to whether they should fight the mandate. All I am saying is that I do not believe that there is a consensus in the railroad industry that they will refrain from fighting the PTC mandate because they need the strength to fight re-regulation. It sounds plausible, but what is the basis of this conclusion?
I don't discount anything that Ed Hamberger said.
So, then what do you mean by, "I am not convinced that the industry holds a consensus that they should not fight the mandate because they are better off saving their capital to fight re-regulation. I am not even convinced that that is a wise strategy."
Ed Hamberger espouses the industry position. When there is no consensus, he is silent.
I can tell you, at least for NS, that when the CEO offers his opinion on PTC, he infers it's a waste of money, but it's reregulation that keeps him up at night. Fear of reregulation is also THE key point used to get employees to contribute to the PAC. PTC is not mentioned.
The railroads decided to all buy the WABTEC system. QED.
Bucyrusut aside from that, I was posing that possibility that they might be in favor of it to contrast the popular perception that they must be opposed to it.
There is middle ground between "against" and "in favor" and that's where the RRs are positioned.
BucyrusAnd yet, you say they don’t think it’s a wise way to spend capital. I interpret that view as being opposed to the PTC mandate.
They have said "we don't think it is a wise mandate, yet you say we must do it, so we will." That's pretty much it.
You think they should fight a two front war? PTC is an expensive annoyance. There is even a chance that the technology might provide some decent benefits down the line. Re-regulation could be a stock price killer. There is no upside....
Perhaps part of the reason they haven't fought PTC is they don't think they can win. Kind of like attacking Russia in winter.... They are just trying to make the best of it.
BroadwayLionBut a derailed train is better than a head on collision.
Only if the trade-off is one for one.
BroadwayLionAND THERE WOULD BE NO PENALTY BRAKE IF THE CREW WAS OPERATING THE TRAIN PROPERLY IN THE FIRST PLACE!
Not necessarily true. It all depends on how the braking curves are constructed. If you do "one size fits all" then PTC would be more restrictive than "proper operation". That is, if you build your braking curve based on all loads, minimum operable brakes, lowest braking ratio (e.g. loaded unit train), you'll wind up having to slow up much sooner and faster than current practice for a typical merchandise train. The engineer could be operating in the same, safe manner he does today, but he could get a penalty brake operation because the programmed braking curve is so severe.
The Route of the Broadway Lion The Largest Subway Layout in North Dakota.
Here there be cats. LIONS with CAMERAS
oltmannd Bucyrus4) Railroads do not oppose the mandate, but nearly everyone assumes they do. Your original question was "Do Railroad Managers Secretly Favor PTC?" The RRs are not opposed to PTC. They are not in favor of it either. Those are two different statements. They don't think it's wise way to spend capital, but they are neither pulling for it or trying to push it away. They are merely trying to comply with the law. I suppose they believe that being opposed to it would bring a worse outcome in general than taking no action. They have only so much political capital to spend. Gotta make the most of it. Spending it on PTC when there are bigger fish to fry is not wise, either.
Bucyrus4) Railroads do not oppose the mandate, but nearly everyone assumes they do.
Your original question was "Do Railroad Managers Secretly Favor PTC?"
The RRs are not opposed to PTC. They are not in favor of it either. Those are two different statements.
They don't think it's wise way to spend capital, but they are neither pulling for it or trying to push it away. They are merely trying to comply with the law.
I suppose they believe that being opposed to it would bring a worse outcome in general than taking no action. They have only so much political capital to spend. Gotta make the most of it. Spending it on PTC when there are bigger fish to fry is not wise, either.
When I asked if railroad manager secretly favor PTC, I should have clarified that I mean the PTC mandate and not just the concept of PTC. But aside from that, I was posing that possibility that they might be in favor of it to contrast the popular perception that they must be opposed to it.
From what railroad management has said generally, I cannot actually tell if they are for it or against it as a group, or even if there is any consensus among them. So my question was merely to suggest that they may not be opposed to it as is widely assumed. And then I offered a reason why they might actually be in favor of it, and thus not opposed to it.
You say railroads are not opposed to the mandate, and not in favor of it. And yet, you say they don’t think it’s a wise way to spend capital. I interpret that view as being opposed to the PTC mandate.
Generally, I must conclude that there is no consensus within the industry on any particular position regarding PTC or the PTC mandate. I am not convinced that the industry holds a consensus that they should not fight the mandate because they are better off saving their capital to fight re-regulation. I am not even convinced that that is a wise strategy. You know what they say about a person feeding the crocodile being the last person to be eaten.
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