- [Narrator] Narrator] Good evening and welcome to The Upper Cumberland Camera.

later on tonight show, we'll visit Monterey high school.

Where students presented a festival of Greek foods.

And we'll take a look at the recent Dogwood run held in Cookeville.

But first tonight, producer Steven Boots with this story.

- [Steven Boots] Senator Albert Gore Jr, recently held a public hearing in Lebanon, Tennessee on the possibility of closing down the 95 mile railroad line between Nashville and Monterrey.

Seaboard system railroad is studying the feasibility of abandoning the line.

And representatives of the company came to the hearing which was also attended by area government and industry representatives who would be affected by abandonment, as well as some who have already seen rail lines in their areas, abandoned.

- I'm sure that CSX has operating figures that characterize this line as less profitable than it wants it to be.

Any business is out to maximize its profits.

But the railroad is more than a convenience.

It is the economic lifeblood for many communities, especially small and medium-sized cities like Lebanon, Carthage and Cookeville.

Not mention Baxter, Algood, Monterey.

Some of the other areas served by this line.

To the shippers, which provide local jobs.

A rail line abandonment can mean shutting down, moving the plan elsewhere and moving the jobs with it.

I believe L and N is only following the bottom line dictates of its parent company, CSX.

And moving this line into the abandonment study category.

After all, with corporate offices in Richmond and with the conglomerate, corporate empire involved in mergers and diversification.

One can hardly expect CSX to have the interests of Lebanon, Carthage and Cookeville foremost on their minds and foremost on their corporate planning board.

But we can start a process to make CSX accountable, to make them more responsive and less willing to give up on the economies of this area.

We're here tonight to start the ball rolling.

And as I mentioned before to look at alternatives.

- During the last 10, 15 years.

The railroad industry due to the strong competition from the trucking industry.

Basically, predominantly, has found it extremely difficult to participate, to compete with the trucking industry.

And the trucks have using taxpayer subsidized highways and they have been very aggressive.

And as a result of that, the railroad industry over the last 10 years has lost a large market share to the trucking industry.

Fortunately in 1981, Congress passed the staggers act deregulating American railroads.

All of us in the railroad industry.

We're very excited about that and pleased they provided railroads with an opportunity to meet truck competition and try to gain back some of the markets we had lost, over the last 10 years.

This year, we're gonna spend approximately $500 million on maintaining our railroad system.

So we knew that we had to get our thoughts down.

And so a couple of years ago when Dick salmon became president of seaboard and we began to look at the cost and the seaboard system railroad.

We decided that we were going to have to start looking at light density lines.

Those lines, which we were losing money on, cost far exceeded revenue.

And so for the first time, really.

We began to look very strongly at getting, looking at these light density lines and making some hard decisions to eliminate some of those lines so that our core system perse, would be a strong system to provide a sufficient transportation system for the shippers.

- And you attributed the lowering of your market share of the transportation business in this area to the trucking transportation.

First, let me say that you've had aggressive trucking transportation in this area for some time at least for the past 20 years that I know of my myself.

Mr. Whitfield, did you really expect to hang on to your share of the market, of rail transportation.

When you let your track deteriorate to the extent that you're restricted now to operating at just 10 miles per hour, over much of the track I think that's the lowest acceptable level by the federal government.

When you let you to track your track deteriorate to the extent that you often experience derailment.

So over this track that we have in question here.

And did you really expect to hold on to your share of the market when you don't really have an aggressive marketing program in this area?

And when you don't respond as quickly as shippers need you to, to supply them with cars when they asked for those cars?

- There were a number of things that happened that made us lose our business.

And of course we in the railroad we don't like to abandon lines.

So if we can make a line profitable we really do want to try to stay there if that's possible.

And we certainly would not let a line go down.

That is a profitable line for us.

And as I said earlier, we have a limited amount of resources.

We have to maintain these lines.

And so we try to allocate it in the areas where the line is profitable.

So, I mean, we have not we did not deliberately sit back and say, look, you know we'd like to get rid of this line.

So let's not spend money on that line.

- [Albert Gore Jr.] We'll follow you on that?

Doesn't have a point.

I mean, it doesn't have a point.

If you let the, if you there's a chicken and the egg proposition here, if you allow the condition of the rail line to deteriorate so badly that freight can only be shipped at 10 miles per hour and you have the regular derailments isn't that a large part of the reason why you've had this decline from 3300 carloads in 1981, that 1500 carloads in 1984.

- Well, Senator, I guess that's true.

It is sort of a chicken and egg situation.

And the only answer I would have is that, we have a limited amount of funds and we try to locate the expenditure of those funds on the lines that are most possible for us.

- One of the biggest problems I see is indecision of what's going to happen here.

And I think they all, did you agree with me on this?

One of the biggest problems you got economic development growth in a year is not knowing what's going to happen to this rail line.

It's going to be here or its not going to be.

I think we need to proceed to do something to answer that question, and then we can move on.

That's the thing isn't going to be here.

It's not, I don't know that today.

I'd like to have the answer, but I don't know what it is and I think that's one of the biggest things people won't look if they're afraid of what's going to happen.

So I'd like to see us move ahead and go ahead with the thing so that we'd all have the answers to that question.

- I would hate to think that our telephone companies if they decided that this section down in Putnam County, was not a very profitable area to run phone lines to they decided not to provide a phone service.

I think that the public service commission would say that that wouldn't happen.

I think the ICC needs to realize that as a grant piecemeal and section abandonment they're severing any hope of keeping rail service.

I think they all changed their posture.

Okay.

Let's look at the alternatives.

If you don't want it, who can take it and what will it take to make it profitable?

There's other things we can allude to.

I'm concerned about future expansion in our County and this whole upper common area.

We talked about the loss of shipments.

Some of that will happen to attrition.

We know that companies change and shipments will change.

Elvin Lashley with our chamber alluded to about a thousand jobs and several a hundred carloads of shipments.

That could be new business.

- Out of 30 lines that have been abandoned, five of them are still operating as short line railroads four of those five, where the way is owned by the public and public entities that contract with a private operator to run the short-line railroad.

It may be possible to do the same thing here.

We, I think it's fair to say we do not yet have the hard economic facts, but if the facts come back and it looks like it can be done and should be done then we've got a great big job on our hands.

And Don Darden can give us some flavor of what lies in store for us, if this turns out to be the course of action recommended.

- [Don Darden] Statistics show that 97% of all abandonment requests are granted.

Railroad accounts are permitted to factor in off branch costs, which can easily show that almost any branch lines should be abandoned.

It's a mistake to fight the abandonment of this line because if you do, you're putting off the inevitable you're moving it five years down the road or 10 years down the road.

You're not removing the uncertainty that's been brought up here today.

There will always be that uncertainty.

You go to Mr. Lee, as you say, at a fortune 500 company.

And I say, well, we haven't got rail service here.

Yeah, but we will have it five years from now.

Will you have it 10 years from now?

you can't answer that question.

So to overcome that, you need to look at how can we preserve continued rail service in the community.

If you engage the short line operator the entire effort should be to change carriers without interruption of service.

There's nothing that I've said that is as important as that.

Because if the shippers think, this line is going down the tubes, they're going to make other arrangements.

There are to be sure of several operating schemes an independent operator could buy the line and provide services and authorities to buy the line and operate rail services site.

That would be different.

Shippers could buy the line and make it operate.

And that's probably unbind.

The authority could buy and contract with an independent operator or ship around the company to operate rail service.

And all these obviously prefer authority on the ship for the shipper owned company operating the rail service.

I think that is the best way to guarantee continued rail service in the future.

And so what I'm telling you is that, the new is shaky as it may seem, the best you can do is get your company together and forget about protesting abandonment and try to provide the best kind of rail service, that you can provide for the communities in this part of the state for now and for the future.

And if you don't do that, you still going to be faced with the same decision either next year or five years from now, or sometime later.

- If, when the economic data comes back, it looks like there is a feasibility of operating a short line, at that point, seems to me that we are quickly determined with the shippers and with the three counties involved, do we want to do it?

- [All] We want to do it.

- And if the answer is yes, that seems to me that's the choice.

If the economic surveyor and if that the will is there then that's the decision.

It seems to me.

If the economic facts, point in the other direction, then I think that's a different situation.

- [Interviewer] Food, lots of food, lots of Greek food.

That's what students and faculty at Monterey high school were preparing and eating last Thursday, at the second annual Greek picnic.

Faculty member Peggy ForgoPolis, organized the second annual event.

- Well, first of all, the students in the ninth and 10th grade have been studying a Greek unit.

Those in the ninth grade have studied the Odyssey and the 10th graders have just finished their study of Antigone.

And so for a culmination of this activity they have a Greek picnic, and usually we are outside but because of the weather, we're having it inside today and the students are given recipes and they prepare the food and we eat.

- [Interviewer] So the students have prepared every bit of this food.

- [Peggy] Every bit.

In fact, we even had bought a whole lamb and we were up at the school all night last night.

Barbecue in the lamb on the spit.

The students themselves devised a means to cook it.

And we did it ham rotisserie we turned it every so often.

And we were cooking it for about 10 hours.

10 hours now.

And it's basted with a butter and oregano and lemon.

And the students took turns.

They came in shifts last night, from 10 to 12 to help with the preparation.

Then 12 to two, two to four and four to six and then six to eight.

And then we had students out of the study hall to finish cooking it this morning but it was an all night ordeal.

I gave them the recipes last week, so they could show it to their moms and whoever was going to help them prepare it.

And really the process of actually preparing Greek food, is a very long ordeal.

It, they do not have just quickie meals.

So many of the students were preparing these meals, or their dish for three and four hours last night.

So it was really an undertaking, many of the like the cheese pies that they made each one has to be folded individually.

And the baklava, each phyllo sheet is buttered individually.

So it's really a painstaking process.

And the students have just done beautifully, really have.

- [Interviewer] what are some of the favorite foods among students?

- [Peggy] Probably a dish that's called moussaka.

It's made with ground beef and layers of potatoes.

And the sweet that is the most popular, is baklava.

Very good.

Yes.

- [Narrator] What are some of the unique foods, that Americans might not have acquired a taste for?

- [Peggy] probably the cheese dishes.

There is the Greeks eat feta cheese which is made with goat's milk.

And we have a dish that is it's called teropeaches, and Spanish teropeaches which is made with the cheese.

It's a little cheese triangle, of spinach and cheese.

And so that's probably it.

- [Narrator] Okay.

How is it?

- Great.

The first time I've tried Greek food and I really like it.

- [Interviewer] What's the best.

- The baklava.

We call it baklava.

They call it baklava.

It's I don't know.

It's Brown sugar in something.

It's it's sweet.

It's good.

- [Interviewer] What did you think was the best?

- Well, I liked everything I ate.

I'm not sure I know what I ate.

- [Interviewer] You like the cheese?

- Yeah.

- [Interviewer] You eat a lot of cheese today.

- I have no idea.

- [Interviewer] Did you eat a lot of stuff that you didn't know what it was?

- Yeah.

Didn't we all?

- I didn't like the Lamb?

- [All] The Lamb.

- I liked the lamb.

I don't know.

I guess I just thought about it.

- [Interviewer] Did you like the cheese dish?

- [All] Yeah.

- [Interviewer] What was your favorite?

- The meatballs, I guess.

- [Narrator] And what was the worst food?

- cheese balls?

- [Interviewer] What was wrong with the cheese?

- I don't like cheese.

- [Interviewer] What about the baklava?

Have you eaten any of that yet?

- I probably have I just didn't know it.

- [Narrator] When the dogwoods bloom, it marks the beginning of the racing season, at least in the upper Cumberland region of Tennessee.

A few weeks ago, participants in four different races and spectators gathered at the fleet guard plant site to celebrate spring.

The day's activities began with a one mile fun run.

Dads ran with their sons.

Moms ran with their daughters, moms ran or walked with their sons, and it was not only a fun run.

It was a salute to family fitness as well.

At nine o'clock, it was time for the 10 K run.

More than 248 participants had registered for the run, including runners from Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga and other areas of the state of Tennessee.

(gun fire) (people screaming) (siren wailing) Although it was a hot day the first mile was running five minutes and eight seconds.

And it wasn't long before Gerardo Davis of Nashville, crossed the finish line to win his third 10 K run, in as many years.

(applause) Dogwood run organizer Monte lo, commented on the race and participants.

- We had to run around 280 something, 10 K runners.

And they were, they seemed all have a good time.

We had a little heat problem out here and we want to thank all the people that were in the community that had some water sprays out on the course.

It was really nice.

A lot of runners commented on it and also our fire department and the protection from the city and all I'm afraid I get in trouble by the forgetting everybody.

But chamber of commerce, fleet guard, are two true terrific sponsors, Kroger's and bud light, without them, there would not have been any dogwood at all again.

And I just can't say enough for the people that have helped us - [Narrator] With runners in shorts, bare chested and ready to face the heat of the course.

It was unusual to see the Tennessee tech Rangers in army fatigues and packs, getting ready to run the 6.2 mile course.

- [Monte Lo] Knowing the heat as it is today.

I'd say it's close to 84, 85 degrees right now.

And I am always concerned about the heat for the runners.

And what it will do to them is, we had two or three to have to take some emergency care but the Rangers dressed out in full gear.

I talked with them prior to the race.

I advised them.

I did not want them to do this.

Of course, as these gentlemen are trained that they do it as they're told to do.

And so they did it anyway, and they did a super job.

They ran together, they would walk the Hills they carried their own water.

And I think other than probably having to repack a couple of sleeping bags along the way they didn't find form.

And as you saw as they crossed the finish line, they looked good.

They didn't look like they were suffering from it all their boys and those boys were in good shape.

(chanting) - [Narrator] After the 10 K run, it was time for the children.

Students in Putnam County schools grades four to six, gathered to run an a one mile fun run.

(screaming) (upbeat music) Then it was time for the half mile race, for children in grades kindergarten through three.

- On your marks, go.

(screams) (upbeat music) - [Narrator] Again, this year Northeast school, won the award for the most participants.

After the schools awards were given, it was time for the big event, the awards in all age groups for their participants, in the Dogwood 10 K run.

(music) Ron PhilliPeck, who is always running the race.

And who is the Tennessee tech cross country coach, talked about the course.

- So I did pretty good sometime train so well and for the trade, but it was extremely hot today.

It was rather difficult for many to runners.

- Was that one of the problems, for the course today was the heat.

- The course itself was rather easy, but the heat really took its toll but for a moment.

- How do you know that the heat is beginning to get to you?

- Oh, your legs feel heavy your breathing is a little labored and you just don't have the energy to go up to the Hills anymore.

- All in all how many years have you been in the Dogwood run now?

- I think it's my sixth year and I've been running about 10 years.

- You plan to keep running in it.

- Oh, definitely, it's great cardiovascular exercise and I'll keep on doing it.

- I noticed in perhaps some of your cross country runners from tech were in the race today also, how did they do?

- I was rather pleased.

I had to run and come in six place overall.

And I was rather pleased with that.

We had about eight guys running my team and I was rather pleased to see that.

- What is your advice to someone running on a day like this, as a coach and as a runner.

- Drink a lot of liquids and don't exert yourself too much.

Just go for the best time and don't try to kill yourself.

- But weather definitely does make a difference in how fast-- What's an ideal day to run?

- I like around 50 degrees.

So you can tell by the winning time 33 minutes and some seconds, it wasn't a great time but enough to win the race.

- [Narrator] JC Kelly, a member of the fleet guard team, also talked about the race.

- The guard sponsored a running team and we ran pretty good.

I guess I didn't get the overall time on it but we come in first place in it, of course was all right.

It just, it was hot.

That took a spout a minute off my time.

I'd say probably.

And it was the course, you know, it was real good and they would just, the weather was a main thing today.

- [Narrator] Mrs. Claudine Branch, winner of her age division started running three years ago.

She had this to say about running and fitness.

- And my children gave me a pair of shoes for mother's day, one year.

And it had a note in it that said run.

So I've been running ever since.

- [Interviewer] Where do you train most of the time?

- Ah, we live about three and a three and a half miles out a couple on the, in the Wellington wood area.

And I just run out in the area.

- [Interviewer] So did you sort of start cold, three years ago running?

- When I first started, I went out to the track and I ran that in loop and then I brought the ends and run the end loop and one day I got psych I ran a complete one time around the track and that was no stopping after that.

I went all the way.

(laughter) - [Interviewer] Well, that's wonderful as an inspiration.

What was your advice to other people in your age group?

Should they take up running?

- Go see a doctor, if the doctor Say it's okay.

go to it.

(music) - [Narrator] And that's the upper Cumberland camera, for this week.

Next week at this time tune in to the brainpower bowl.

When the two finalist teams, from Cookeville junior high school, will compete for the academic championship.

That's next week here on channel 22.

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