Word: rails
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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. to 50 m.p.h. beneath the hulking mansions of the great rail barons, visionaries and crooks. This is power, this is excitement, this is the guts of America...
...Chicago offices of the Santa Fe, they will tell you that "the engine of our growth for the next several years" is going to be intermodal traffic, which means the use of truck trailers and special containers that can be easily exchanged between rail and truck chassis. Santa Fe and the giant trucking concern of J.B. Hunt Transport, in Lowell, Arkansas, pioneered the modern strategic alliances between trains and trucks, which used to be mortal enemies in the marketplace. Increased rail efficiency, rising truck costs and as much as 100% driver turnover a year in trucking drove the two industries...
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...
...only the rail behemoths that do well. There are 410 short lines, fragments of old roads that have been reconstituted by adventuresome rail buffs and entrepreneurs to hook customers up with the main lines. The Maryland Midland is one. Nestled in the hills below Camp David, the presidential retreat, it serves 34 customers who need coal and raw materials to turn out cement and lumber products. Paul Denton, 51, a refugee from the Baltimore & Ohio in Baltimore, Maryland, is president, commanding a fleet of 200 cars over 67 miles of track. From a tiny office in the quaint 1902 depot...
...Commuter rail and a walk will take you to Walden Pond, made famous by Harvard's own Henry David Thoreau, Class...