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What Amtrak needs...

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  • Member since
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Posted by Paul Milenkovic on Monday, November 5, 2012 11:31 AM

henry6

Yep.  NS may actually want something hundreds of miles away from Atlanta and is holding Peachtree tracks as hostage...we don't know...

A person on the "inside" of NS gives us the straight dope on what kind of horse trading "The Thoroughbred" might have in mind.

Hostage?  The management of Norfolk Southern is armed with LMGs and RPGs?

They are a for-profit corporation answerable (by law!) to their shareholders, and they are not supposed to bargain for something of value in exchange for providing something of value?  People in the advocacy community need to get real.

If GM "killed the electric car", what am I doing standing next to an EV-1, a half a block from the WSOR tracks?

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Posted by henry6 on Monday, November 5, 2012 7:43 AM

Yep.  NS may actually want something hundreds of miles away from Atlanta and is holding Peachtree tracks as hostage...we don't know...

RIDEWITHMEHENRY is the name for our almost monthly day of riding trains and transit in either the NYCity or Philadelphia areas including all commuter lines, Amtrak, subways, light rail and trolleys, bus and ferries when warranted. No fees, just let us know you want to join the ride and pay your fares. Ask to be on our email list or find us on FB as RIDEWITHMEHENRY (all caps) to get descriptions of each outing.

  • Member since
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What Amtrak needs...
Posted by oltmannd on Monday, November 5, 2012 7:28 AM

...is some who can negotiate with the freight RRs on an eye-to-eye basis.

From Dec Trains, "Long Distance Dreams Deferred" talking about adding feeder buses at Atlanta if a loco and coaches could be switched at Atlanta.  "Though Norfolk Southern had allowed Amtrak to perform a similar move in the past, it contends freight traffic is too busy through the constricted area to allow it now."

A savvy negotiator would know there is the same or less traffic through here now than a few years ago because the GM plant in Doraville is no longer.  NS may be trying to avoid a bottleneck in the future when the Crescent Corridor fleshes out, but right now???

The trick would be to find out what NS really wants and needs and then negotiate a way to get it done.  This can only be done if you know as much about their operation as they do.

-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/

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