Or blame it on the factors that made even a well-run outfit like NYC a wallflower:
Interstate highway construction and its severe impact of rail traffic
Regulation that tied almost every initiative in knots
Rapacious property taxes
Blow after blow from federally-awarded wage increases and hikes in employment taxes, roughly 1956-on
The passenger obligation
Union intransigence and "In the long run we are all dead" mindset
Unimaginative, herd-mentality management on some RRs (see under "consequences of regulatory environment")
On the larger eastern RR's, a massive inheritance of debt that desperately needed to be restructured (see under "stupid, purblind creditors")
The secular decline of many traditional rail-user industries, and the flight of such industries to the South for many of the same reasons the eastern RRs failed
To name a few.
WDB
Interstate highway construction and its severe impact of rail traffic
Regulation that tied almost every initiative in knots
Rapacious property taxes
Blow after blow from federally-awarded wage increases and hikes in employment taxes, roughly 1956-on
The passenger obligation
Union intransigence and "In the long run we are all dead" mindset
Unimaginative, herd-mentality management on some RRs (see under "consequences of regulatory environment")
On the larger eastern RR's, a massive inheritance of debt that desperately needed to be restructured (see under "stupid, purblind creditors")
The secular decline of many traditional rail-user industries, and the flight of such industries to the South for many of the same reasons the eastern RRs failed
To name a few.
WDB