FROM THE EDITOR, RAILWAY AGE FEBRUARY 2026 ISSUE: Cartoons are supposed to give a fast, easy-to-understand message, without requiring much contemplation, right?
Take the classic Peanuts scene, for example. Lucy holds the football for perpetually hapless place-kicker Charlie Brown. Believing that Lucy, who deep down is really a mean, narcissistic little kid, won’t do what she repeatedly does—pull the ball away at the last moment—gullible, gentle soul Charlie charges forward, aims his foot dead-center on the ball, and wham! falls flat on his back. She’s fooled him again! Good grief!
This Jan. 27 X-posting by Union Pacific took me a while to figure out. First, “This isn’t your grandmother’s railroad!” What exactly is that supposed to mean? UP (or virtually any railroad) is your grandmother’s, grandfather’s, father’s, mother’s, uncle’s, grand-uncle’s great-grandfather’s, great-great-grandfather’s railroad, etc. It’s 157 years old! Almost as old as Railway Age (170).
What’s a “store” got to do with the proposed Union Pacific-Norfolk Southern merger? Is it a café car? Nah! Harvey House? Nah! (Besides, that chain was on the Santa Fe.) See the two containers marked “UP” and “NS”? Perhaps they contain half-and-half? Adding them together equals one? That doesn’t work, either, because you still end up with half-and-half, eh?
Here’s what I think it means: The gray-suited guy holding the “Coffee Concessions” folder represents a railroad seeking merger conditions from the STB, like trackage rights, line sales, reciprocal switching, whatever. He wants to set up shop in, or at least have access to, UP territory. The guy behind the counter in the yellow shirt represents UP. He looks a bit non-plussed, though so far that hasn’t represented Jim Vena’s publicly stated views on concessions.
Can we try to make the obvious less obscure? Onward and sideways, in Notch 8!
