Choo Choos

I am kinda sad I was born so late and missed the railroads.  If not the peak of passenger lines, at least to see the tail end.  And a few more steam locomotive.

In the 80s I saw a steal train pass here.

It was the last steam locomotive I would ever see person, unless I seek one out.  It was also one of the first I ever saw.  Funny how that works.

I would have liked to have seen the B&O and C&O in in better times.  And when there was more cabooses about.  Another thing that disappeared before I could say goodbye.   Saw more of them than steam locomotives, sure.

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Do yourself a favor and don't follow the Beaver River from Youngstown to the Ohio River and then up the Ohio to Pittsburgh.  The train tracks follow the River and it is dead steel plant after dead steel plant.  Or the sites of plants.  Most of the building have been scrubbed away.

What could have magically happened in the 70s to keep those plants in place?  We still make steel in this country.  LOTS of it.  A little over half the volume we made 50 years ago, admittedly, but that's still LOTS of steel.  China is ten times bigger than us.  But before China, back then, it was other foreign sources.

Well even with gov't protections, production would not have lasted.  Even with huge union concession, the mills still couldn't have stayed open.  The plants needed to be magically modernized.  And that costs.  And with modernizations comes efficiencies, so you get the massive personnel layoffs regardless.  You end up only firing 95,000 in the Beaver/Ohio River valleys instead of 100,000.  The towns would still have hollowed out.

Follow the train and the river from Youngstown to Pittburg.

Gun content:  Steel is in guns, and bad guys robbed trains with guns, and Pinkertons were armed with lever action rifles when they broke up labor strikes.