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Feature Essay
Railroads for the Twenty-first Century
Robert Sutton The nineteenth century was the golden age for American railroads. From the earliest days of railroad building in the United States in the 1830s until the Great Depression of the 1930s, most of the freight and a large share of the passengers in this country moved on steel rails. As the nation grew, the railroads grew with it until, by 1920, there were more than 250,000 miles of rail lines reaching into every corner of the nation. Railroads were at the forefront of every major development in this country from finance to technology to agriculture to labor relations, and a man could make no prouder boast than that "he worked for the railroad." Hard times were ahead, however, and by the 1930s much had changed. The railroads had always faced competition from one another, but a new challenge in the form of automobiles, trucks, and busses proved especially severe. As the Great Depression settled over the United States after 1930, the railroads had already lost half of their passenger business. A similar decline in freight traffic from which the rail lines realized most of their revenue made a bad situation even worse. The history of railroading in the last half of the twentieth century has been one of slow, grudging adjustment to new conditions which not only threatened their supremacy but their very existence as well. One of the stirring chapters in our history is the way American railroads rose to meet the overwhelming challenges and burdens of World War II. Pearl Harbor found them, after a decade of depression, in a shaky condition, and suddenly they were called upon to meet the transportation needs of a nation involved in a war for survival. Military requirements made it necessary to ration gasoline; auto and truck production for civilian use was sharply curtailed, and thousands of railroad workers were called into military service. In the face of this unprecedented demand, railroad traffic, both freight and passenger, during the years of World War II (1942-1945) far exceeded anything that had previously been experienced. At the peak of their war effort the railroads were also carrying 72 percent of the regular freight traffic and 74 percent of the intercity passenger traffic in the nation. As welcome as was the return of peace in 1945, equally unwelcome was the return of the same problems that had plagued the railroads before the war. With gasoline rationing a thing of the past and with unlimited production of automobiles, trucks, and busses attempting to meet the post-war demand, railroads again felt the sharp edge of competition. Freight service managed to hold its own fairly well in the post-war world, but passenger service suffered the full impact of the new competition. The advances in aviation technology in the 1930s and the explosive use of air power during World War II set the stage for the new day in long-distance passenger travel. With the introduction of the first "jet liners" in the late 1950s, the luxury limiteds, which had been the pride of American railroads since the beginning of the twentieth century, could no longer hold their own. Mounting deficits in the passenger traffic departments forced companies to cut service to the point where it appeared in the late 1960s as if rail passenger travel might disappear from the American scene. Two changes in the relationship between the federal government and railroad business signaled better days ahead. In 1971, recognizing that railroads could no longer absorb the heavy annual losses in their passenger departments. Congress established the National Railroad Passenger Corporation with the charge of providing the American people with "modern, attractive, efficient rail service." Originally called Railpax, but now known as Amtrak, this federally managed corporation now provides all the rail passenger service in the United States, except for commuter service in the nation's large cities. The other monumental change was the enactment in 1980 of the Staggers Act, named for Senator Harley Staggers of West Virginia. This landmark legislation enabled the railroads to compete much more effectively in the rapidly changing business environment of the present day. The significance of the Staggers Act will be discussed more fully in the final section of this introduction. Looking ahead, the railroads of the United States are today responding in a variety of resourceful ways in an effort to meet the transportation needs of the twenty-first century. For those who do not wish to fly or who have the time for leisurely travel, Amtrak passenger service has been improved and expanded. The crush of automobile traffic, which often approaches gridlock on urban freeways, has forced the federal government to explore new forms of rapid transit. Most of the public money up to now has
Women took jobs on the railroad during the WWII manpower shortage.
The most fantastic development of all just now is a German effort to build a Magnetic Levitation Trans-rapid (Maglev) line between Berlin and Hamburg to run at more than 250 miles per hour. Using a monorail design with no wheels, the unit utilizes two magnetic systems to provide both lift and propulsion. Though the U.S. Department of Transportation is interested in the Maglev technology, such a development in this country would appear to be far down the line. Less glamorous than the planned innovations in surface passenger travel, the changes and developments in rail freight service are of far greater significance. American railroads have traditionally drawn most of their operating revenue from their freight business; in fact, for most of the twentieth century (and prior to Amtrak) they covered deficits in their passenger service from surpluses in their freight accounts. But just as cars, busses, and airplanes provided grim and relentless competition for passenger revenue-producing business, so did trucks, pipe lines, air freight carriers, and barge lines challenge the profitable freight-carrying business. After years of declining profits leading to cutbacks and retrenchment, rail prospects in the last two decades have brightened considerably. The secret? The two "D" words妖eregulation and diversification. Deregulation under the Staggers Act of 1980 freed the railroads from burdensome and long-outdated rules and regulations imposed by the Interstate Commerce Commission dating back to 1887. On the strength of this new freedom, rail freight managers responded with vigor and imagination. Soon the familiar caboose disappeared from long freight trains as radio communication between train crews, dispatchers, and signal towers proved both satisfactory and safe. This added up to a considerable savings in operating equipment and labor costs. Unit trains, so-called because they hauled only a single commodity, became commonplace all over the country. Products such as coal, grain, petroleum, chemicals, and stone lend themselves most successfully to unit-train operation. Long unit trains of coal and grain are familiar sights on the Illinois prairies. Freight trains, more than a mile in length with anywhere from one hundred to more than two hundred cars, and pulled by two to ten diesel locomotives, move mountains of products to every corner of the nation. One of the most successful aspects of diversification is the "trailer-on-flat-car" service or "piggybacking" as it is called. By developing specially designed low-level flat cars on which one or more
highway truck trailers can be secured, one train can haul scores of truck trailers, thus removing them from the nation's highways. This service was initially developed soon after World War II, has multiplied rapidly in recent years, and is now one of the fastest growing aspects of freight transportation. A further refinement of what is now called intermodal shipping is the coordination of ocean-going freight carriers with rail service. Large specially designed containers, usually square or rectangular in shape, can be off-loaded from a ship by huge cranes and quickly secured on a rail car for fast overland travel. This service is especially valuable where global shipments are involved, with American railroads providing the connecting link between Atlantic and Pacific seaports. Railroads like the Union Pacific and the Illinois Central are presently spending millions of dollars either to expand or build new intermodal facilities. The Santa Fe Railroad has been a leader in this business for some years and accounts for nearly half of the nation's intermodal traffic. The largest share of Santa Fe's 1993 income of nearly $2.5 billion came from this service. After watching their share of the nation's freight-hauling business decline steadily for nearly three decades, American railroads have discovered ways of reversing that trend. Though it is not likely that American railroads will ever again dominate the transportation scene in the United States as they did at the beginning of the twentieth century, there is every reason to believe that they will continue to play a major role in meeting the transportation needs of the twenty-first century. Suggested Reading
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