WASHINGTON — Pressure to reduce terminal dwell figures has prompted some Union Pacific yards to routinely depart trains that include misrouted cars simply to get them moving, a UP engineer alleges in a letter sent to federal regulators. Michael Lindsey, a veteran engineer based in Pocatello, Idaho, used a train he ran to Nampa, Idaho, […]
WASHINGTON – Union Pacific has been delivering unit grain trains as scheduled to a major California poultry and feed producer since federal regulators issued an emergency service order last month. But Fowler Farms, the largest chicken producer in the West, is seeking a 90-day extension of the emergency service order, which expired on July 17. […]
LAKE GENEVA, Wis. — It just may be that CSX Transportation CEO Jim Foote is a bit weary of hearing about the evils of Precision Scheduled Railroading. In his customary blunt style, Foote gave that impression Tuesday when speaking to the Midwest Association of Rail Shippers about ongoing service issues for his railroad and the […]
CHICAGO — Inflation is still on the rise, reporting a 9% increase in June, driven in part by higher costs for energy and other commodities hauled by railroads. Updates to the nation’s consumer price index released for June earlier this week noted that inflation rose more than 1% from May as a result of elevated […]
WASHINGTON – The Livonia, Avon & Lakeville Railroad family is growing. Next month the New York state railroad will acquire a controlling interest in neighboring short line Ontario Midland Railroad, it said in a July 13 filing with the Surface Transportation Board. Ontario Midland operates 47 miles of trackage east of Rochester, N.Y., and connects […]
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden has named Ira F. Jaffe to chair the three-member Presidential Emergency Board addressing the rail labor dispute, Reuters reports. Also named to the board were Boston College professor David Twomey and independent arbitrator Barbara C. Deinhardt. Jaffe has served on five previous emergency boards — four involving rail disputes and one […]
WASHINGTON — Preventing a national rail strike that could have begun Monday, July 18, President Joe Biden has established a Presidential Emergency Board to investigate the ongoing dispute between railroads and workers. Biden will name the members of the three-person board, whose members can not have any financial or other interest in either a rail […]
WASHINGTON — Canadian Pacific and Kansas City Southern — responding to critics, skeptics, and opponents — told federal regulators this week that their proposed merger is in the public interest and should be approved. The railroads, in a three-volume, 4,374-page filing, argued that the first merger of Class I railroads in two decades should sail through […]
CHICAGO — Class I railroads appreciate moving large volumes of traffic across long routes. There’s efficiency and carload profitability gains by running fewer trains for longer distances on relatively consistent schedules. When this is successful, customers see their shipments make great strides across chunks of a Class I railroad’s network. But some customers’ locations aren’t […]
A Kansas City Southern intermodal train heads for the Union Pacific Brownsville Subdivision at Robstown, Texas, in November 2017. Bill Stephens WASHINGTON – Projected traffic increases from the Canadian Pacific-Kansas City Southern merger will put the critical Houston terminal into gridlock, BNSF Railway has warned federal regulators this week, citing a new analysis. CP and […]
WASHINGTON — Canadian Pacific believes concerns by Chicago’s Metra over its proposed merger with Kansas City Southern are largely unfounded, based on erroneous analysis, and involve unreasonable requests for conditions to the merger. But for all that, CP says it is committed to supporting Metra operations and improving its relationship with the commuter agency. The […]
WASHINGTON — Weekly U.S. rail traffic remains below 2021 figures in the latest statistics from the Association of American Railroads. Both carload and intermodal traffic were down for the week ending July 9, with 207,450 carloads, a 1.3% decline from the corresponding week in 2021, and 230,150 containers and trailers, a 4.7% drop. The combined […]
