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So here I am up in Massachusetts, about eight weeks into this new job, and I get an email telling me about a public hearing that the Joint Committee on Transportation of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was having, and that there was a bill that would allow the transfer of surplus railroad property from the DOT to the railroads in Massachusetts.

One thing that sets the railroad industry apart from a lot of other ones is the fact that most training is done in the field and not in the classroom. Yes, there are a lot of items that you learn and study out of a book, but you really learn how to railroad as you practice your craft. Because of that, mentoring is an essential part of every railroader’s career. We all hear about the old timers in a company, and while to a young guy they may be crusty and old fashioned, those people are the ones who will teach you how to railroad properly.

As a result of my new job up in Massachusetts, I have been spending some significant time on the Mass Pike, which is the major East-West highway in the state. Now I can get over the people who don’t turn on their headlights when it is dark out (this happened twice the other day, so I guess it is a regular practice), but what really has caught my attention are the big trucks.

Back in June when I walked out of the Morristown & Erie as an employee for the last time, I really didn’t think that I would be walking into the front door of another railroad as an employee any time soon. Why, you ask? Part of the reason was that I had spent almost all of my working life at one company, one that I have huge emotional ties to, and to be honest I wasn’t ready to be put into that situation again.I had a great summer.

Last week I was in Washington, DC, to accompany my wife for a conference that she was attending. While she was in sessions, I had the days to myself, and I had the obvious options to do, like going to the museums or spending time with my mother in-law (she was there with my father in-law, who was teaching at the conference), but I decided instead to follow up on the Railroad Day on Capitol Hill visits made in June with visits to six of our legislators from New Jersey who had not signed on as co-sponsors to the 45G infrastructure tax credit.

Wow, has it been a busy month. Since the middle of August, it seems all I have done is get on airplanes. Not all of it was for work, but most of it was. Things started out with the ASLRRA Joint Committee meetings in Sacramento that I described last time, continued on a quick vacation with the family to San Diego, and finished with a marathon trip to Canada and the ASLRRA Central/Pacific Regional meeting.

I really don’t need to explain why, in this day and age of constant electronic communication, face to face time is extremely important. Call me old fashioned, but you can get more done in a day with five smart guys in a room than you can in a month of emails. That being said, imagine what you can do with 50 smart people in the room.This happened at the ASLRRA’s first ever six committee joint meeting in Sacramento last week.

As has happened a bit too much recently, I received a shock on Friday afternoon. I found out that one of my close friends in the industry, Mike Paras, general manager of transportation for the Belt Railway of Chicago had passed away suddenly the day before.

Over the years, I’ve made no secret about my general dislike of being on the road. Don’t get me wrong, I understand that it is a very necessary part of the business, but there is one very unfortunate part about it that I really don’t love, and that is the large amount of time spent waiting to do your job. I don’t believe in the zip in, spend minimum time at the customer, and zip out method of travel, because as a small businessman, the face to face time is important, and you can take care of more problems and prevent bad habits from forming by being there.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been dealing with PTC a little bit more than usual, and mostly on the political side. Shortly before Railroad Day on Capitol Hill there was the House hearing on the Amtrak accident in Pennsylvania, and when we went to visit the members of the New Jersey delegation, PTC was a major point of discussion.Now before we get into the point of contention, let’s put the simple things aside. No one is arguing with the PTC requirement, and no one is saying that they are not going to do it, or can’t do it.So where did the discussion start?

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