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SwitchPoints is the inspiring story of how Canadian National Railway (CN) advanced from good to great in a few short years–becoming North America's top-performing railroad and a favorite with of corporate customers and investors. In it, the authors reveal how company-wide culture change propelled this aging transportation giant to become the profitable powerhouse it is today. Rich with insights and anecdotes, SwitchPoints offers lessons that can be applied to any organization seeking to improve the bottom line by improving their culture.

In Concrete: From Ancient Origins to a Problematic Future Mary Soderstrom tells the story of concrete's glorious past, extravagant present, and uncertain future with careful research, lively anecdotes, and thoughtful reflection.

The industrialization process generated many disabilities. However, the historical study of industrial disability has not progressed. This study examines disability welfare in the Japanese railroad industry. In particular, Testudō Kōsaikai, an organization of the Japanese National Railways (JNR) established in 1931, was uniquely devoted to welfare activities by linking a profit-making business and the provision of welfare. To cover welfare costs, such as providing workshops for disabled people, Kōsaikai conducted profit-making businesses, such as sales at station stalls. However, the welfare of disabled people in the JNR, including the activities of Kōsaikai, has not been previously examined. This study clarified the structure of disability welfare in the Japanese railroad industry until the early postwar period. People with a lower degree of disability, such as one upper or lower member amputation, were employed by the JNR, while some of these people were employed by Kōsaikai as sellers or officers, or accepted job training in Kōsaikai workshops. On the contrary, although few people with higher degrees of disability were employed by the JNR and Kōsaikai, the latter employed their family members to compensate them for their living costs.

Japan’s prewar railroad business (Ministry of Transport) was transferred to a public corporation, Japanese National Railways (JNR), after World War II and eventually went bankrupt. This was due to a number of factors, including the decline in the position of railroads, ballooning personnel costs, and the existence of unprofitable local lines. However, the issue that directly caused the crash was the failure of the financing scheme that formed part of the company’s third long-term plan, which commenced in FY 1965. The company had not taken government subsidies or increased its borrowings from the Fiscal Investment and Loan Program (FILP), but instead went outside the FILP and issued large volumes of high-interest rate tokubetsu (special) bonds without a government guarantee, so that by FY 1967, interest and debt-related expenses totaled 101.2 billion yen, or about the same as the 104 billion yen raised by tokubetsu bonds. In other words, tokubetsu bonds were being issued to finance the payment of interest on railway bonds. As a result, the company went bankrupt in the first few years of its seven-year plan, which changed into a financial rehabilitation plan starting in FY 1969.

This article concerns German railway cartography in the mid-nineteenth century and its effects on spatio-political perceptions. The evolution of a railway system in Germany, from isolated single routes into national and ultimately international networks, has been customarily linked to the political issue of unification in 1871. The infrastructural changes triggered the introduction of new maps and map signs, which overshadowed other national and political signs and should not be seen as a simple means to a nationalist end. By examining the developing iconography of railways and railway networks, I argue that railways were a cause of deterritorialization for regions and states and for the vision of a unified Germany.

Through analysis of changes in the passenger transport policies of national rail from the Russo-Japanese War to the Asia-Pacific War, this article provides insights into how war affected the shape of tourism, in particular rail-based tourism, of modern Japan. It finds that international tourism increased and domestic travel/tourism spread between the Russo-Japanese War and the interwar period, giving rise to Japan’s greatest pre-1945 tourism boom. This boom continued despite Japan’s deepening isolation in the 1930s following the Manchuria (Mukden) Incident and withdrawal from the League of Nations. Head of sales at the Railway Bureau’s Transportation Department, Kinoshita Yoshio, established a “business approach” to the transportation system, which put the promotion of leisure travel at the center of policy decisions. However, following the full-scale outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War in 1937, the situation changed dramatically. Use of the rail network for military-related transportation surged, and long-distance limited express services, sleepers, and dining cars were phased out as the national railway switched to a national policy-oriented transportation system. While mountain climbing, pilgrimage to sacred sites, and other forms of travel were encouraged, the idea of “travel for the sake of travel” that underpinned the interwar tourism boom was abandoned. As this demonstrates, war was a productive force in the development of mass tourism—especially pleasure tourism—until the outbreak of full-scale war with China; but the beginning of the Asia-Pacific War, while giving rise to new forms of tourism seen to benefit the wartime state, had a generally restrictive effect on tourism.

Dans cet article, nous évaluons, à partir d'une analyse coûts-avantages, les gains économiques qui ont résulté de l'une des plus importantes operations de privatisation de l'histoire, celle de la Compagnie des chemins de fer nationaux (CN), en novembre 1995. Nous montrons également comment ces gains se répartissent entre les consommateurs (les expéditeurs), les producteurs (les actionnaires) et le gouvernement, ainsi que, plus largement, entre les Canadiens et les étrangers. Pour effectuer une comparaison plus exacte et fiable que celles qu'ont utilisées des etudes passées, nous avons eu recours aux chiffres du Canadien Pacifique. En nous basant sur une analyse hypothétique conservatrice, nous estimons que la privatisation du CN a engendré des gains d'au moins 4 milliards de dollars (en dollars de 1992) - et nous affirmons qu'ils pourraient se chiffrer à une somme allant jusqu'à 15 milliards de dollars. Les actionnaires ont profíté de la plus grande partie de ces gains, et le gouvernement canadien de près de la moitié. This article uses cost-benefit analysis to estimate the welfare gains from the privatization of Canadian National Railway (CN) in November 1995, one of the largest rail privatizations in history. It also shows how these gains have been distributed among consumers, producers, and government, and between Canadians and non-Canadians. The article uses the costs of Canadian Pacific Railway to create a more credible comparison than in previous privatization studies. Based on a conservative counterfactual, we estimate that CN's privatization generated welfare gains of at least $4 billion (in 1992 dollars). However, the welfare gain was possibly as high as $15 billion. The Canadian government captured almost half of these gains, while CN shareholders captured most of the rest.

The report is organized into three chapters: chapter two looks at the pace and patterns of India's urbanization, providing a 100-year perspective on demographic shifts and a 20-year perspective on the spatial distribution of jobs across India's portfolio of settlements. The review is based on a careful, spatially detailed analysis of data from economic and demographic censuses, annual surveys of industry, national sample surveys, and special surveys of freight transport. This chapter provides diagnostics on whether Indian industry is adequately exploiting agglomeration economies and whether there are hints of specific barriers to the natural tendency of standardized industry to reshuffle from large metropolitan areas to smaller urban areas. Chapter three examines specific policy issues and investment bottlenecks that are curbing the pace and benefits of urbanization in India. The policy issues relate to land markets and housing, connectivity (within and between cities), and access to basic services. The purpose of this analysis is to unravel the specific distortions that may be preventing India from reaping the entire range of benefits of urbanization. Chapter four provides some options for policy reform, distilling lessons from relevant international experience. It provides options for establishing the 'rules of the game' that can define the workings of land and property markets as well as coordination of land use and infrastructure in cities. This chapter also provides a framework for policy makers to identify the role of regulatory and price reform in expanding infrastructure services and to make investments that enhance capacity.