Posted on 12/12/2011 12:26:17 PM PST by bigbob
And yes, I miss Willi green -- I didn't agree with all he said, but it was good to have a devil's advocate voice.
If you know anyone looking for a new career, have them check out the railroads.
They expecting 30-40% of the conductors and engineers to retire in the next 5 years due to age(baby boomers).
Potential downside for a freeper is that it is union work. Upside is that it is one of the highest paying jobs you can just walk into with nothing more than a High School diploma and a clean record. Appx. $45k your first year and average of $67k/year after that + $22k in benefits package.
Best plus if you can make it a career is the retirement. When you work for the railroad, you are taken out of Social Security and you start paying into the Railroad Retirement, which is WAY better. If you can due 30 years you can get 100% retirement + your spouse can get 50% on top of that.
There is no real cut off age to get started with them. People in their 50’s have hired on recently and tons of people in their 30’s looking for a new/second career.
Problem is it works good on paper, but when put in practice, the rail is still slower than a snail.
Outside of the areas West of the Mississippi where the railroads crossed public lands the US government wanted to have settled by farmers, where did railroads get FREE RIGHT OF WAY?
You are now being silly.
Eminent Domain has been in the US Constitution because it has been known since the very first days of man that contiguous land was required for moving products from point A to point B. You are being silly because while you obsessively focus on the rails you seem to forget about every road from farm-to-market to interstate, you forget about every canal that was dug, every pipeline laid, every high powered electric line.
In the late nineteenth century, you could walk for days without seeing anyone or anything, so a forty foot wide swath going through mostly Indian country was nothing. Besides, how on earth did you expect the farmer and rancher to get their product to market without roads and rail roads? How do you expect them to get their tools, clothes and other materials from the industrial East without roads and rails?
It was the railroad, not the Colt revolver, the tamed the West. And here you want a retroactive penalty against the lifeblood of this country.
When the railroads came through (once they'd been invented) they had to acquire land the old fashioned way ~ either someone traded it for stock, or they paid for it. The government wasn't giving it away at that time.
"Free Land" was the claim but that idea is simply not supportable East of the Mississippi.
Yes, The Big Boy is a great loco too as I like it. I also like the Challenger.
Both the big work horse moved millions of tons of freight and troops for the effort during WWII. Thank goodness we had them!!
“Both the big work horse moved millions of tons of freight and troops for the effort during WWII. Thank goodness we had them!!”
Indeed they did. It can be argued that the Challenger was the world’s largest passenger locomotive, although it was designed primarily for moving fast freight.
Couldn't agree more with your comment on the Challenger......dat sucker is fast on flat grade. IIRC, UP's #3985 was chased at 70 mph not to long ago.
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