After all...

....Jerkimiah T. Deadwood was a helluva storyteller. Trouble was, he couldn't hide what a malevolent prick he was. One time he gave one of his windy lectures at a show. He was introduced to me and made a point later in the lecture to say the guys who worked these same roads for tourists weren't "real" railroaders. Almost in the same breath, he said all trainmen were "worthless" and the brave engineers carried all the freight on the Old Narrow Gauge. That didn't set well with a well-known Rio Grande conductor I was with. He made a point of stopping him after the lecture and telling him how deeply he resented his comments. He used way more diplomacy than Jerkimiah was worth. Since this conductor was a big guy who could have kicked Jerkimiah's wrinked old ass right then and there, true to the form of all bullies, he backbedaled like a sonofabitch. Like you, Danny, I am still astounded this piece of work had the arrogance to profit off of the very people he professed to despise.
There were many excellent officials in railroading... then there were a legion of jerks. Bad officals treated their salaried jobs as semi-retirement, when they weren't torturing some railroader they didn't like or stealing the company blind, while worrying only about making themselves look good. Bad officials didn't do their job, they were despised by their workers, and cost the railroad a helluva lot of money. Good officials cared deeply about the safety of their people first, and the good of the company a very close second. Incredibly, railroads, both big and small, seem to have trouble distinguishing between good and bad officials. Bad officials feared good officials and made it their life's work to discredit them. God bless these good men who took the hardest of jobs, as they are the main reason railroads still exist. Too bad everyone only remembers the Deadwoods of the world.