With no disrespect intended toward the original poster, this sort of limited understanding on the part of the general public toward both how the railroads actually operate, and the ability of the economy to shift frteight traffic, is an indication of why both our infrastucure other than rail which, thankfully, remains mostly in private hands and our economy in general are in such poor shape.
Those of us here in middle age and later can remember a time in the late 1960's and all through the 70's whe three such accidents wouldn't have raised an eyebrow. At that time, over a third of our rail mileage, some of it outside the admitted "basket case" in the politiclly-hostile Northeast was in bankruptcy, or flirting with it.
But even under those circumstances, there were any number of commodities -- not only coal, but other bulk minerals, grain, chemicals, low-valued things like scrap metal and certain paper and wood products -- that could not have moved any other way. The extra burden on the highway system would have been too great.
Looking ahead. I can see a challenge emerging for the railroads when the completion of PANAMX diverts, or at least shortens the haul on (we don't yet know how much of) that very-profitable merchandise traffic. But the upside of this is that there will be excess capacity to sell on a network which has been rebuilt and well-maintained. From that point, it should be nothing more than some adjustments in pricing.
An an increasingly female-oriented and over-sensitized media needs some education to move us back toward a time when at least the male hallf of the population posessed some basic understanding of how the nation's transporation system actually works.
What a revoltin' development this is! (William Bendix)
