by The Workers
Why is it that PATH falls under FRA rules & regulations and the MTA's subways do not? Does it have to do with their "interstate" operation (NY/NJ)? Or does their equippment fall under some different catagory?
Railroad Forums
Moderator: GirlOnTheTrain
As the former Hudson Tubes [or Hudson Rapid Tubes] of the Hudson & Manhattan Railroad Company, [PATH was] not quite the same as most other urban transit systems in the United States. The Tubes' operations were regarded more as a true railroad operation, not as just a subway or elevated running through a city or a built up area.
They were seen as a connecting railroad, small, but still a railroad. Labor organization was based on the railroad unions, not on transit unions; the safety operations were under the Federal Railway Board [and its predecessors and successors] not under a state or local authority. The stations, at least at Hudson Terminal and Journal Square, sold through railroad tickets for journeys across the country. The Class I railroads' timetables listed the H&M as a connecting line, theoretically parallel in importance to long distance lines like the B&O or Lehigh Valley ......
Even the garb of the motormen, engineers, was that of the railroads: striped denim engineer overalls and engineer cap. [Conductors dressed as the conductors on the Class I railroads did, but this was also true, for the most part, of conductors on other transit systems.] After the PA takeover, regulations, laws and customs changed; there is now little reminder of the Tubes as a railroad and a piece of railroad romanticism and of local peculiarity is gone.
The Workers wrote:Why is it that PATH falls under FRA rules & regulations and the MTA's subways do not? Does it have to do with their "interstate" operation (NY/NJ)? Or does their equippment fall under some different catagory?
Irish Chieftain wrote:Incidentally, during the B&O, it was the SIRR. SIRT or SIRTOA is definitely a NYCTA/MTA designation, dropped recently in favor of "Staten Island Railway" (SIR). See this forum for more on that...The Staten Island Railroad was chartered in 1851 to run from Vanderbilt Landing (Clifton) to Tottenville. In 1873 it was reorganized as the Staten Island Railway.
Yanks Rule wrote:Second, you are mistaken about a person being a poor employee and not having his/her job affected. I know of several incidents where employees have been terminated or demoted as a result of poor judgment, work habits et cetera. To suggest otherwise is irresponsible.I think he was referring to the person's driving (automobile) record, not related to his job as a motorman/engineer.