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(rshsdepot) OT: isms



Here is a site where a guy who seems very mad cites every and any source 
you may need to show how GM did categorically do the nasty things to 
most North American electric transit:
www.trainweb.org/mts/letters/reason.html

and now some rambling

I don't know about this ism or that, that's all ephemeral man-made need 
to put order and reason to everything, to categorize it...

yeah, rail is man made, nut as opposed to an ism, it is tangible, there 
is something more, that interconnecting tissue of America sort of 
thing...has O'Hare or Dallas International ever going to have the 
grandeur or extra something of a rail arrival..that when I lived in San 
Jos=E9, and Menlo Park, that the rails don the street near the old train 
station on the Caltrans, that that was connected all the way across the 
country to the LIRR branch line that, well, that I am now back and close 
to...there is a connection there that is not quite the same as the open 
road, which has its own romance, how else to see Scipio Utah and Cozad 
Nebraska and well, anywhere you may wander if you don't follow the huge 
interstates as most do, if locally you take the side ways instead of the 
highways, like most would wont to do...

rail has romance...rail has connection, stations and depots were the 
heart of towns and cities, some still are in this country, still at 
least clinging on, but there are some, and there is some respect for 
those abandoned now but surviving, even some still near the right of way 
if not real tie and rail..


The Robber-Barons were not named that out of the blue, capitalism in the 
19th century was brutal..anyway, the link I give you is from a 
Libertarian and they would respect a robber baron, that sort of 
capitalist...

I worked in radio, but not now, because it almost seems that every radio 
station now is owned by one company..isms lead to overdoing....radio is 
not only for filthy lucre ?) but for the public good, for art even, or 
so it should be (again)...

Rail should have been a legacy, much of California was given away to the 
companies that built the railroads, Gould performed vile acts to get his 
line built, these systems and interweaving formerly competitive rail 
routes were a legacy that has been abandoned and shut down and a lot of 
it thrown away....I don't know what ism did that, and no, that one is 
not really a conspiracy, that was mostly called progress, all that 
ripping up of the Bronx, all those super highways constructed to carry 
armies across the country, what excess and hubris- last message I was 
extolling coal over diesel, external combustion via steam v polluting 
diesel=3Dthat the rail system was variously dismantled might be looked 
down by future historians as shameful and shortsighted...we shall 
see...someday when the trickles run out from drilling I Alaska, when we 
run out of oil from those far off exotic lands (well, they were in Hope 
& Crosby "Road to///" movies!)..

And in this particular shame, where cities had viable traction systems, 
there were commuter systems all over the place (yeah some were vastly 
over built and I really couldn't argue for local suburban systems here 
on Long Island (except the Huntington Railway which served a route 
definitely needed...Route 110 out there up to Huntington, the road does 
not move now (I blame this on SUVs, but that's my personal ism that I 
dislike vastly  SUVism..that is the road that the Huntington Ry. covered 
for the most part))-a shame that these systems were dismantled, that LA 
will never catch up to what they once had and Brooklyn doesn't even 
remember, nor know they could even care about such a thing...

Look I am a dreamer, call it dreamism, I realize streetcars in Brooklyn 
seems odd now, but I did live near San Francisco, and I know Brooklyn 
could have been similar vis a vis streetcars (pardon the French with 
those with isms against that, maybe it is Latin)..

Anyway in this case, GM and others were complicit, and I am confused why 
any one would want to put out misinformation/disinformation about this, 
it is old news, and hardly relevant to today, most everyone involved is 
probably dead..

sorry for all the yakking, I am into babblism

Paul





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The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org

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End of RSHSDepot Digest V1 #639
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=================================
The Railroad Station Historical Society maintains a database of existing
railroad structures at: http://www.rrshs.org