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RAILROAD RANT
Aug. 21st, 2012 07:40 amWARNING! RANT COMING!
This is not an anti-Amtrack rant. This is an anti Union Pacific rant.
UP Knows the Amtrack schedule. The State of Oregon (you and I, friends, you and I) pays a lot of money for access to those tracks for the Cascades trains.
So why the beep do they run a deadhead freight train north between Eugene and Albany at a time when they know it will delay the southbound passenger train?
If there were a good reason- say “plague in Jefferson and we gotta get this medicine there right now”- that would be one thing. But most of the cars were *empty*. The closed boxcars probably contained cheap plastic ripoff shit going to Walmart to be sold to people too ignorant to know better. It could all have waited.
You don’t even want to hear me rant about the our northbound delay, two minutes from Union Station for two beeping hours. I think that was a power trip by the twit running the bridge. (I understand that most people are powerless most of the time, and the temptation is great to abuse the little power one has in the short periods of time when one has it. Resist that temptation, friends, you are only harming other powerless people.)
This is not an anti-Amtrack rant. This is an anti Union Pacific rant.
UP Knows the Amtrack schedule. The State of Oregon (you and I, friends, you and I) pays a lot of money for access to those tracks for the Cascades trains.
So why the beep do they run a deadhead freight train north between Eugene and Albany at a time when they know it will delay the southbound passenger train?
If there were a good reason- say “plague in Jefferson and we gotta get this medicine there right now”- that would be one thing. But most of the cars were *empty*. The closed boxcars probably contained cheap plastic ripoff shit going to Walmart to be sold to people too ignorant to know better. It could all have waited.
You don’t even want to hear me rant about the our northbound delay, two minutes from Union Station for two beeping hours. I think that was a power trip by the twit running the bridge. (I understand that most people are powerless most of the time, and the temptation is great to abuse the little power one has in the short periods of time when one has it. Resist that temptation, friends, you are only harming other powerless people.)
