Unfortunately, today's corporations are all to often bean counter micro-managed investments. Cows to be milked to death. Workers are not an asset, but a liability, to be disposed of as quickly as opportunity presents. It is very hard to develop any camaraderie and production can easily suffer, as people are constantly looking over their shoulders for someone coming to pink slip them, instead of being happy to come to work. The business ends up not lean and mean, but instead failing to meet potential. Oh what brilliant minds we are (not) pumping out of the post-K-12 scenarios!
Texas & New Orleans MK-5 Mikado 794 pulls passenger duty on the Hustler out of Houston sometime between the summer of 1951 and August 1, 1954 when the train was discontinued. This locomotive has been cosmetically restored and is on display at Sunset Depot in San Antonio, Texas.
A Laurenburg & Southern "critter", April 2011. This is a North Carolina shortline, about 30 Miles long.
It was indeed once used for that purpose. Although the number is hard to read, it's No. 150, a GE 25-tonner that was built in 1943 for the Bethlehem Steel Company.
CSX, like all US railroads, is pouring hundreds of millions of valuable dollars into Federally-mandated PTC (Positive Train Control) signaling. I took this shot to take note of the seeming overkill of signal bungalows as part of the work. Here we can see three new bungalows -- two to the left adjacent to the rusty-roof SAL hut and another on the right down by the highway crossing. In our age of modern electronics, I wonder why so many PTC-borne bungalows are needed. There may be good reasoning for it all; I wish I knew more.
Safety awareness train. Mostly law enforcement and city officials from the towns and counties southwest of Houston along the Sunset Route.
The Texas Limited ran daily between Houston and Galveston from August on 1989 until sometime in 1994. To make the train break even they wanted to increase it to twice daily but because of the slow track speed set up for freight trains (crossing gates and warning lights) they could not speed things up enough to get it to work.
Some time around 1900, a gentleman holds a parasol for a lady beside a train in Austin, Texas. Is the lady on the left shuffling cards on the car steps?
