Capacity Issues Need More Attention

[Eddie Sand]

For forty years after the close of World War II, the Class I railroads, particularly on the Eastern Seaboard and in much of the Midwest, were plagued by an overbuilt and underutilized physical plant. This was paritcularly true on the multiple-track mainlines built in the days when passengers moved at 60 MPH, and freight at 20,

Some roads, particularly the Pennsylvania and B&O, retained the three and four-track mainlines with only marginal reductions in the manned interlockings which controlled traffic. Others, most notably New York Central, attempted to reduce maintenance costs by slimming down to two main tracks, completely CTC-controlled and usually signalled in both directions. Occasaional "long sidings" of up to four miles in length, were retained for overtaking of slower traffic, but this apparently became less of a concern as passenger moves diminished or disappeared altogether

Mergers did not appear to have too much of an effect until the inception of Conrail made much of the former Lackawanna, Lehigh Valley  and the Erie west of Sterling, OH almost completely redundant. Little interest was shown in the development of shorter and faster freight services, or those more responsive to customer demands, in the mode of Readiing's "Bee-Line experiment.

In the West, traffic held up better, and actually grew on a few major transcontinentals, so those routes simultaneously evolved toward the bi-directional "2-main-track" system pioneeered by NYC. Finally, the closure of less-fuel-efficient routes (the Milwaukee west of Miles City, MT, UP's former Rio Grande Tennesse Pass Line, and much of B&O's St Louis line west of Cumberland, MD) completed the downsizing.

I've developed all these points because the issues of capacity, which have lingered in the background since the rails' market share began to revive in the mid-Eighties, might be brought to greater attention by the public in light of several emerging trends and issues -- specifically (1) the likely diversion of some transcontinental container traffic from Los Angeles/Long Beach to East Coast ports (2) the continuing, and increasing presence of energy concerns, fueling in part growth in crude petroleum traffic, and the raising of safety issues.

The railorads have ratemaking options to deal with this that they did not possess in the 1950's-70's, but the short-term focus common to modern-day entrepreneurship, and the vulnerability of an expensive plant to de facto confiscation via the shifiting winds of politics make it likely that any major improvements in capacity will be expected to be funded largely by the public sector in the pursuit of "jobs". And safety concens might pave the way for concessions in return for the rehabillitation of some lines bypassing major cities in the flat and once-overbuilt Midwest. But the apparent failure of attempts to recapture a large market for perishable traffic as demonstrated by suspension of the industry's firast "unit perishable train" demonstrates that there is a lot of work to be done.