KF>I've also heard in recent days that
KF> BW> U.P.
KF> BW> has a backlog of cars in some number of freight yards awaiting 
ransit
KF> BW> to their destination, some of these already on "hold" for a month or
KF> BW> more. Which may explain the recent closed-door meeting in Houston not
KF> BW> too long ago that had operating department and shippers discussing 
ow
KF> BW> the railroad will clear up the backlog and keep it from happening
KF> BW> again.
 
KF>Yeah. This was an offshoot of the fact that UP didn't learn their lesson 
fro
KF>the C&NW takeover. According to reports, they closed two SP yards in 
Houston
KF>and tried to move everything to the UP yard, which plugged it solid. Also 

KF>lack of crews, and then they'd put a crew on a freight, only to have it 
it
KF>for 12 hours waiting to get in or out of the yard. Smart. Very smart.
 
C&NW being only one the U.P. has not learned from. They also had some
difficulty when taking over both Missouri Pacific and Western Pacific
some year back, and should have learned from errors made at that time.
One of the problems likely to be adding to this latest round has been
the increase in freight business over the past few years which is bound
to put more pressure on the entire system, regardless of who's name
might be on the railroad.
 
 
KF> BW> As I've heard around the San Francisco Bay area in the past ten days
KF> BW> or
KF> BW> two weeks. One of those commute railroads likely to be affected by a
KF> BW> strike would be the CalTrain Peninsula service between San Francisco
KF> BW> and
KF> BW> San Jose/Gilroy. If it comes, "self-loading" freight will be on its
KF> BW> own.
 
KF>Does Amtrak also do maintainence for CalTrain? I guess the affected union 
is
KF>the maintainence of way people. They've been on a 60 day "cooling off" 
perio
KF>which is up on Wednesday. Don't look for any strike to last longer than 
mayb
KF>an hour or so till an injunction is in place to go back to work again.
 
To some degree. Going back to when SP/CalTrain commute service ran only
as far as the former S.P. station in San Jose, there would have been no
need for Amtrak to handle maintenance, as S.P., then CalTrans (the state
dept. of transportation), then the Joint Powers Board (NOT a marijuana
smoke-in out here! ) was the operating entity. With several trains
each way between San Jose and Gilroy, Amtrak can take full
responsibility for that segment of the tracks, but like most agencies
intent on building their empire, has taken over the entire commute
territory now. All this added for Amtrak was the 46.9 miles of what S.P.
viewed as the northern most segment of its Coast Line. That, too, has
been changed with the U.P. takeover, as "Coast Line" now runs between
San Jose/Santa Clara and West Oakland (the Mulford Line), rather than up
the S.F. Peninsula.
 
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 # SLMR 2.1a # When in doubt, mumble.  When in trouble, delegate.
 # PDQWK 2.5 #51
 
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