It’s About Damn Time!

Don’t you love that wonderful “I’m mad as hell …” rant that actor Peter Finch immortalized as newscaster Howard Beale in the film “Network”?

Well, something like that has just happened in our world. 

A lawyer for Norfolk Southern sent a formal letter to Amtrak demanding that Amtrak stop tweeting information about Amtrak trains running late and identifying the cause—specifically that they were stuck behind slow moving NS freights. 

I’m guessing the Norfolk Southern attorney knew that the letter was a dumb idea, but was goaded into it by one of the railroad’s top executives.
At any rate, the fallout was 100-percent predictable: an Amtrak executive wrote back to Norfolk Southern and said, in so many words, “We’re sick and tired of you guys not giving a damn and constantly making our trains run late.”  

And then the Amtrak guy did what until this incident would have been unthinkable: he released copies of both letters to the media! Of course that triggered news reports of the dust-up, including a front-page story in the Wall Sweet Journal! 

Click here for a link to the complete story by Sean Jeans-Gail in RPA’s Hotline #1109. It has excerpts from both letters and it’s absolutely delicious to see Norfolk Southern get the blame it richly deserves. And three cheers to Amtrak for making those letters public. It was gutsy and the right thing to do!