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Re: (erielack) Re: The EL un-merger



Rick and List,

I was actually referring to what the ICC used to call the Eastern District, ie west of Chicago and St Louis. The scenario in Greenville is quite common, where former manufacturing centers now count health care facilities as the largest employer, and people who once worked in manufacturing have retrained as health care workers. Noone would argue that health care is unnecessary, especially with our "graying" population, but technically it's a parasitic segment of the economy, consuming resources and not creating wealth or producing goods for export. However we are figuring out how to outsource this sector as well. If you've had an X-ray lately, there's a good chance it was read on the cheap by a radiologist in India, and I've heard that several insurers are now offering incentives to subscribers to travel there for surgical procedures. Like flippin' burgers, pushing chemo isn't going to help our massive trade deficit.

As for piggyback, northeast Ohio is presently more than adequately served by two Cleveland terminals and one in Marion, all of which draw from as far east as Pittsburgh. Now that intermodal has evolved into a transcontinental mode catering mostly to international business, 200 mile drays are routine when boxes have travelled 2500 miles by rail, so your hubs can be widely separated. Intermodal terminals are not very labor intensive anyway; I doubt if any of these facilities employ more than a couple of dozen people. In that area EL alone maintained ramps at Marion, Mansfield, Akron, Cleveland, Sharon and Meadville. Of course, it's questionable if any of these low-volume facilities were profitable, and EL would have been wise to consolidate traffic at two ramps, say Akron and Marion.

Paul B    
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: RJFlei_@_aol.com 
  To: doctorpb_@_bellsouth.net ; erielack@lists.railfan.net 
  Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2006 8:15 AM
  Subject: Re: (erielack) Re: The EL un-merger


  List,

  Speaking of the de-industrialization of the east, this has also happened in the mid-west. If you look at EL territory in eastern Ohio and western Pa it's quite glaring. 

  Over 80, 000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in the Mahoning Valley alone. 

  In Greeenville, Pa. there is practically no industry left, and I believe that probably Thiel College or the Greenville Hospital may be the largest employer now. Remember Greenville Steel Car? It was taken over by Trinity Industries, who built a modern, state of the art carbuilding facility in Mexico, then shut Greenville down. CB&I also closed. The B&LE is greatly downsized in Greenville. Much of Werner Ladder is gone - to Mexico & China. 

  Sharon, Pa. lost the Westinghouse transformer business that once employed 15, 000 people. Wheatland Tube is closing or has closed a tube mill because of Chinese imports. Then there was Sharon Steel - mostly gone. 

  There is no longer ANY steel made in Youngstown. There is a pipe mill there, but they don't make the steel. 

  WCI Steel in Warren is the only steel making facility left in the Mahoning Valley, and it's living on borrowed time. Packard Electric in Warren, now Delphi, is shifting most all of it's work to Mexico, China, and India. What's left in Warren will most likely be gone in a few years. 

  It used to be that plants were shut down and moved south. Now everything seems to be going offshore.

  I could go on and on about the plant closings, and I've only scratched the surface. These, plus the many I've not mentioned produced quite a bit of revenue for the EL. If you look at the entire route of the EL, there is basically nothing left that could produce revenue. 

  The only thing you could hope for is some kind of piggyback or doublestack business of imported goods destined cities along the route. All that we seem to have left in this country are paper shufflers, pencil pushers, beancounters, and vulture capitalists. We don't produce many value added products anymore. 

  Maybe the death of the EL back in 1976 was somewhat of a merciful one, looking back. Had they not gone into Conrail it surely would have been a slow, agonizing death. I was bad enough as it was. 

  Rick Fleischer
  Cortland, Oh.

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