Word: conrail
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...said the Whalens had been married for 36years and that Dennis has worked for Conrail forthe past 30 years, most recently as a trainconductor
Sensing an untold story, Sidey hit the rails to interview people at all levels of the freight industry. He rode a Conrail train up the west side of the Hudson River Valley, getting an engineer's-eye view of spectacular scenery; half a continent away, he observed the switchings, couplings and uncouplings at a vast freight yard in North Platte, Nebraska. These experiences called up memories of his Iowa childhood and his long romance with railroads: "I remember as a four-year-old hearing the train whistle on a winter morning and pressing my nose against an icy windowpane...
...Newark, New Jersey, and up the west side of the Hudson River, three locomotives lug 63 flatbed freight cars -- almost a mile of Conrail train for United Parcel and the U.S. Postal Service, due in California in 72 hours. Engineer Jim Metzger, 42, flicks his eyes like beacons from digital screens inside his cab to the roadbed and back -- right hand on the throttle controlling 11,400 horses, left hand on the three-tone whistle, two longs, a short and a long at every crossing. Past suburban backyards and friendly waves, through the West Point tunnel, rolling from 35 m.p.h...
Railroad baron William Henry Vanderbilt's scornful dismissal of rail patrons ("The public be damned"), which has shadowed the industry for more than a century, at last seems laid to rest. "We are customer driven; we tailor-make our service for our customers," says James Hagen, chairman of Conrail, a firm that was fabricated out of the bankrupt remains of dozens of lines, including the legendary New York Central and the Pennsylvania. Conrail lost $412 million in 1977, the first full year after it was birthed. Last year it made $282 million. Hagen and his cohorts in the rail business...
...minutes he had alerted California crews, who placed three locomotives in the path to take the crunch. No lives were lost. Locomotives that used to sit for days waiting for loaded cars are now turned around in hours. Empty cars are shuttled like airplanes. Huge "hump" operations like Conrail's Selkirk Yard, near Albany, New York, can sort 3,200 freight cars a day and send out trains to 70 destinations...