This misunderstanding of costs by railroads allowed buses to cream off a lot of the short-haul traffic. It's analogous to what's going on now, where railroads have a clear preference for intermodal and bulk (unit) trains, even though much more profit is contributed by carload freight.

So it's hard to say how much the ICC contributed. The ICC mandated a "betterment" accounting system that understated capital costs and overstated operating costs. However, it is not clear to me that railroads could have developed a better accounting system on their own.

In general, though, we can presume that an unregulated industry would have attracted more entrepreneurs and encouraged more experimentation. So who knows? Maybe, even with the massive investment in highways that governments were making in the 1950s, the decline might have been slower if railroads had been able to innovate.

It is my undersatnding that the railroads generally recognized that new technologies were on the horizon, but they didn't have the capital to make necessary upgrades. They would have if they could have. Meanwhile, Uncle Sam was providing tons of capital to upgrade highways and aviation, but not to the railroads. We all know where the customers went.

As for the Santa Fe, they were very reluctant to join Amtrak. If I remember the story correctly, by A Day the Super Chief was no longer running. Some time earlier SF wanted to drop the Grand Canyon and keep the Chief, but the ICC had different ideas. They argued the Grand Canyon served areas underserved by other modes, but the Chief didn't. Thus they ordered SF to drop the Chief and keep the Grand Canyon.

It seems perverse that railroads doing the best job with their passenger service had the most incentive to join Amtrak, but that's the way it worked.

Two non-rail business events occurred this past week that I believe are analogus to "The End' for railroad operated intercity passenger service, which to me occurred during Third Quarter 1967.

The most significant event is the announcement that AT&T Corporation will no longer solicit for consumer Long Distance telecommunication business. While reports have confirmed that they will continue to provide LD service to existing accounts, they in effect have said no more new household business.

Folks, this is Ma Bell we are talking about - she has publicly said that she doesent care if I "reach out and touch Aunt Agnes" anymore.

Obviously, the railroads said officially on A-Day, they no longer wanted my business, even though I believe the effective date was actually during Autumn 1967, when using the excuse of loss of contracts to handle First Class US Mail, the railroads "wanted out-the quicker the better".

The second event is probably more difficult with which to draw analogies. and that is Microsoft Corporations to disinvest some 10% of its Market capitalization directly to its shareholders and to disinvest even further through repurchase of its stock on the open market. While obviously Microsoft isn't going anywhere anytime soon, it certainly means that the software development industry is entering a new phase by telling shareholders; "We are out of options to continue to effectively reinvest your money. Therefore, do it yourself".

Here are links to material recently appearing in The New York Times:

ATT: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/23/business/media/23adco.html
Microsoft (Opinion): http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/23/opinion/23carr.html

The changes was certainly not to result in faster service, particularly in the smaller distances. It was in part promoted that way. Cheaper it may have been, but then you get what you pay for or less, but never more. The trucks that got the mail were mostly owner-operators and many underpriced themselves becuase they did not understand how to properly estimate thier full cost of operation. The post office also squeezed the railroads as hard as they could without concern about the financial viability of the service for the railroad. Sometimes they would also demand schedule adjustments that would be passenger unfriendly.

The railroad mail service was virtually inextricably linked to passenger trains. The railway mail cars were called Railway Post Offices (RPO) and truly functioned as a post office as well as transportation. At many stations there would be drop boxes for letters which were given handed up to the train and received their stamp cancellation in the RPO.

To give a specific example, in Athens, Tennessee, where I was for a while, there were two open trays on the couter in the station, one labeled northbound mail and the other southbound mail. At that time Southern had three train each way that stopped there. North, they all went to Knoxville and on to Washington, DC. South, we had the Bham Special early morning to its namesake, The Pelican mid afternoon to New Orleans, and the Tennesseean late evening to Memphis. I could take a letter to the station up to about 10:00pm, and it would be in the bag kicked out the door of the KC Florida Special as it passed through my home town late the next morning. The time would be three days now if you are lucky.

Back from my digression: First, mail could be a delayer of passenger trains, as well as their reason for being. It was not particularly profitable, if at all, and included a lot of non-train infrastructure. Mail hooks for on the fly grabs, pick up of the thrown out bags, major handling facilites at large stations for transfer of mail between trains as well as to and from post offices.

I recall on one occasion during the time my mother was a clerk, (late 50's) when the catcher hook punctured the mail bag. It got dragged into the mailcar, after losing about half its contents and resulting in a miss of the next catch point. The postal inspectors were called and walked the track picking up all the dropped mail they could find.

Mail clerks in RPO's were required to be armed. I believe the standard was a 38 revolver in a holster on their belt. It was a fairly high pressure job, as you would have as little as three minutes to dump a bag, pick out the packet for the next town, get it into the bag and kick it out, while having your hook positioned to catch the next bag. This is the service that obeyed the post office's old slogan to the maximum. Try standing in an open doorway in mid winter making all this happen properly.

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Originally posted by polarbearucla:
I think the advent of the airplane as a efficent commerical transporter pretty much doomed rail.

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That's not correct. So air's everything?

Did it doom highway transporation?

There's nothing efficient about air now, especially since we've been paying $15 BILLION a year in federal dollars (NOT user-fees) before 9/11. Now it's $30 billion.

If it was so efficient as you claim, how come long lines at screening areas delay boardings?

Besides, I've never had to remove my shoe to board a train or bus.