Some developing thoughts as a younger person:
1. This dude doesn’t look like he wants to be taken seriously. This was clearly a attempt to be “relevant,” and frankly he’s off. This is like that cringe YouTube video made by that old Christian pastor trying to be relevant “Jesus Christ is my (inappropriate racial slur). He’s a C Suite executive at a federally owned corporation, act like it. Your conductors making a fraction of your salary out dress you. Frankly so do a lot of guys on MOW. Don’t pretend you sat down next to me at the bar. He doesn’t need a three piece suit, but good grief his outfit and demeanor sold his personal trainer a lot better than his railroad. As a young person, I’d articulate the situation as if you know what your doing you don’t have to dress up to be taken seriously, but it helps. This leads to
2. He doesn’t sound like he knows what he’s doing. The video was 10 minutes of talking points about nothing. Gee people like the steak dinners over Hungry Man TV dinners. Color me surprised. She didn’t do so great either. Having ridden, by this point in life, probably 100,000 miles on FRA passenger railroads, let me tell him what makes train service excellent: punctuality, cleanliness, safety, professionalism. Nobody cares if the conductor thanks them for making their 10th trip if they’re sitting in a squalid coach, hours late while some raging lunatic runs up and down the aisle screaming. This makes obvious
3. He ain’t no railroad man. I don’t know and I don’t mean to judge, but he put off this disconnected vibe like he grew up a couple brackets away from the median earner, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but the video is about a Transportation Powerhouse and he’s worried about smiling conductors. The NEC is falling down, the average piece of rolling stock is older than me, OTP is shoddy systemwide, not that official timetables are available to prove it. and he’s worried about smiling conductors. Now Philly’s the kind of place where, on the whole, we’d rather have a competent SOB than a smiling ninny, so I’m coming from that angle. A a lot of conductors smile, but the great ones are the ones who could hit the gravel and tape up an air line like it was nothing, pick that drunk up out of his seat and “detrain” him for making that high school girl uncomfortable, pull out the Form D book and get you home when the signals went dark during rush hour. I had two guys handle my run in every morning, Bernie and Paul, and they were both fine trainmen. Paul carried me home too on. The guy was kinda a pain to deal with at times, but I’d take him over probably two thirds of the people who replaced him because he was a railroader. Bernie was just a superconductor. He was a fine trainman, but he also at that million dollar smile and love of the job that you don’t see too often from people today. I’ve had my share of smiling conductors who weren’t great operators and let me tell you, I’d take Paul threatening to dump me (then a kid) at Broad and Glenwood because I didn’t have my pass (which he’d already seen about 8 times that week) immediately available out of 30th Street any day. The CCO, I gather, would pick the other way. All things being equal, conductors need to be professional, but we don’t need to be besties. Frankly, I wonder what he knows about railroading at all. Maybe he’s the type pushing that Amtrak priority means 100% green signals 100% of the time, regardless of consequence. Does he know what NORAC is? I don’t think every executive at Amtrak should necessarily come out of a blue collar operations job, but I don’t know how you run the railroad never having worked for the railroad, and it seems very obvious right now that the railroad is being run by people who don’t know how to run a railroad. And sure he’s the CCO, not the COO, but he’s got real power in the company.
In closing, I wish he came off a little more professional and had a little more insight. He’d be a hero if he said the age of sassy OBS staff is over, report tyrannical screaming coach attendants to 123-456-7890, or lazy SCA’s to
[email protected]. He’d be good if he outlined a concrete 5 point plan. He’d be decent if he dressed a bit better and talked in such a way in the video that convinced me he really understood the intricacies of dining service. All the video really did is convince me those two want to give up on trying to be a Transportation Powerhouse and run a federally subsidized Rocky Mountaineer.
