He also felt that if you introduce a plot hook about something bad being planned for the world and the PCs chose not to do anything about it but something else instead and you let the plot unfold where the bad thing happens that is rail roading. That is such a foreign way to play to me I like a living breathing organic world where while the story is the PCs the world does not revolve around them things happen off stage.
That is also the style of game I prefer to play in as well. In one of my favorite campaigns we didn't manage to stop an apocalypse we missed some clues had some encounters where we lost so that BBEG won the war. That changed our game to instead of trying to stop it but now trying to fix it. I ceertainly didn't see this has any kind of rail roading as a matter of fact I see it as the opposite.
I'd agree, this is pretty much the opposite of a railroad.
On the subject of fudging, I only do it if I think that I have made a mistake which is severely disadvantaging the players. If the players make a mistake, or are even just unlucky I let the dice fall where they may.