High Cost of Letting Go ~ 1970 Union Pacific Railroad

more at http://quickfound.net/

Newspaper reporter investigates why a strange accident occurred. Safety film for railroad workers on how mental upsets cause accidents.

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Pacific_Railroad

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Union Pacific Railroad (reporting mark UP) (or legally Union Pacific Railroad Company and simply Union Pacific) is a freight-hauling railroad that operates 8,500 locomotives over 32,100 route-miles in 23 U.S. states west of Chicago and New Orleans. The Union Pacific Railroad system is the 2nd largest in the United States after BNSF and is one of the world's largest transportation companies. The Union Pacific Railroad is the principal operating company of the Union Pacific Corporation, both headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska.

Founded in 1862, the original Union Pacific Rail Road was part of the First Transcontinental Railroad project, later known as the Overland Route. The railroad was absorbed by the Union Pacific Railway in 1880, which was absorbed by the Union Pacific Railroad in 1897. Over the next century, UP absorbed the Missouri Pacific Railroad, the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company, the Western Pacific Railroad, the Missouri–Kansas–Texas Railroad and the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad.

In 1998, the Union Pacific merged with Southern Pacific Transportation Company, itself a giant system that had absorbed the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad and the St. Louis Southwestern Railway.

Today, Union Pacific and its chief competitor, BNSF Railway, the nation's largest freight railroad by volume, have a duopoly on transcontinental freight rail lines in the western United States...

The original company, the Union Pacific Rail Road was incorporated on July 1, 1862, under an act of Congress entitled Pacific Railroad Act of 1862. The act was approved by President Abraham Lincoln, and it provided for the construction of railroads from the Missouri River to the Pacific as a war measure for the preservation of the Union. It was constructed westward from Council Bluffs, Iowa to meet the Central Pacific Railroad line, which was constructed eastward from Sacramento, California. The combined Union Pacific-Central Pacific line became known as the First Transcontinental Railroad and later the Overland Route.

The line was constructed primarily by Irish labor who had learned their craft during the recent Civil War. Under the guidance of its dominant stockholder Dr. Thomas Clark Durant, the namesake of the city of Durant, Iowa, the first rails were laid in Omaha. The two lines were joined together at Promontory Summit, Utah, 53 miles (85 km) west of Ogden on May 10, 1869, hence creating the first transcontinental railroad in North America...

As the 20th century waned, Union Pacific recognized—like most railroads—that remaining a regional road could only lead to bankruptcy. At the close of December 31, 1925, UP and its subsidiaries had operated 9,834 route-miles and 15,265 track-miles;[citation needed] in 1980, these numbers had remained roughly constant (9,266 route-miles and 15,647 track-miles). But in 1982, UP acquired the Missouri Pacific and Western Pacific railroads, and 1988, the Missouri–Kansas–Texas. By 1993, Union Pacific had doubled its system to 17,835 route-miles.

By then, few large (class I) railroads remained. The same year that Union Pacific merged with the Chicago and North Western (1995), Burlington Northern and ATSF announced plans to merge. The impending BNSF amalgamation would leave one mega-railroad in control of the west. In order to compete, UP quickly merged with Southern Pacific, thereby incorporating D&RGW and Cotton Belt, and forming a duopoly in the West. The merged railroad took the Union Pacific name...