Normally when a strike occurs on a passenger railroad all trains enroute to their destinations continue even after the start of the strike making their normal station stops and doing their normal work. At the destination the crew will yard their train in a normal manner and then leave the property and head for their homes. The hour the strike begins the pickets take their assigned places on a picket line and nobody in their right mind except for management personnel will cross that picket line. In other words it is an orderly shutdown.
On another note of all of the commuter and passenger railroads in the northeast the employees of SEPTA have been historically the lowest paid of all. This is why they had such a long strike in 1983 and this is why they have had various subway, trolley and bus shutdowns since that time. I remember back in late 1982 when these authorities were just getting set up to take over from Conrail that SEPTA was the last one that anybody would want to work for, their pay and their contracts were the lowest of any at that time and I suspect it is still true today.
Sooner or later and I hope it is much sooner SEPTA will have to pony up to prevailing conditions for engineers and others working for them. As a result in 1983 many of their employees were at the bottom of the Conrail rosters, the ones with no other choices than SEPTA.
I know some on here are quick to blame the BLET but I have been a member of that fine organization for a long, long time and believe me when I say it, I know the BLET does not take this situation lightly, they did not want to strike, shut the railroad completely down, leave commuters without an easy way into the city, keep their members and other employees from earning a living but sometimes you need to do it. Four years without a contract is bad enough but then not a good faith offer to settle from the company is even worse.
Incidentally the leadership of the union today does not make the final decision on the strike, the engineers represented by the BLET had to vote on that one and their vote was overwhelmingly in favor of strike action in the event it became necessary. There are a lot of strict procedures required by both the Federal government and by the union itself before a strike can occur and it takes a long time for these procedures to be completely followed. NOBODY wants a strike but enough is enough and the engineers in this case have HAD ENOUGH.
Added paragraph breaks -Ed
