Patrick J. Ottensmeyer, Kansas City Southern CEO TRAINS: David Lassen KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas City Southern reported improved earnings for the fourth quarter as revenue grew despite a slight decline in traffic volume. Much of the financial improvement was due to the railroad’s shift to an operating plan based on Precision Scheduled Railroading, which […]
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — Rail traffic is expected to remain in the doldrums for at least the first half of this year as manufacturing slows, retail inventories remain high, and there are plenty of trucks competing for freight. That’s the outlook of the forecasters at FTR Transportation Intelligence, which last week held a State of Freight […]
LOMBARD, Ill. – Class I railroad mergers are not the sure path to efficiency gains that they once were within the industry. So says Canadian National President and CEO JJ Ruest at the winter meeting of the Midwest Association of Rail Shippers in Lombard on Thursday. Ruest notes that as the entire industry has […]
Association of American Railroads WASHINGTON — The Association of American Railroads today reported U.S. rail traffic for the week ending Jan. 11. For this week, total U.S. weekly rail traffic was 501,624 carloads and intermodal units, down 9.6% compared with the same week last year. Total carloads for the week ending Jan. 11 were 239,119 […]
Greenbrier’s Lorrie Tekorius TRAINS: David Lassen LOMBARD, Ill. – As Precision Scheduled Railroading sweeps the rail industry its effect is also being felt throughout the rail supply industry. Around 408,000 North American freight cars are stored. Some of that is attributed to a 5.1 percent decline in traffic in 2019, but some can also be […]
KCS CEO Pat Ottensmeyer TRAINS: David Lassen LOMBARD, Ill. — In a conference that — like most most rail gatherings these day — had a great deal of focus on PSR, Patrick Ottensmeyer was thinking and talking about PTC. That’s not to say Precision Scheduled Railroading wasn’t part of the Kansas City Southern CEO’s Wednesday […]
To apply the car-card-and-waybill freight-car routing system I described in part 1 takes more than just the two basic forms. The first form is the car card identifying each freight car with a pocket to hold the other form, a 4-step waybill. The pocket and waybill are sized so that only one of the waybill’s […]
One of the most widely used model railroad car-routing systems is an identification card for each car with a pocket to hold a waybill naming a destination. It’s a flexible and versatile method that’s easy to set up, use, and modify as you go along. It’s so common that it will probably be familiar to […]
WASHINGTON — Legislation to force oil companies to decrease the volatility of crude oil shipped by rail has been introduced in Congress. On Jan. 13, Reps. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Bill Foster (D-Ill.), Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) introduced the Crude by Rail Volatility Standard Act. The law would require […]
WASHINGTON — The Association of American Railroads has expressed support for a plan by the White House to dramatically change the National Environmental Policy Act and streamline the environmental review process for infrastructure projects. NEPA requires the federal government to review how major infrastructure projects would impact the environment, but federal officials say it is […]
CORONADO, Calif. — A few final notes from last week’s National Railroad Construction and Maintenance Conference at the Hotel Del Coronado: NS communications restructuring: One unique aspect of Norfolk Southern’s “reimagining,” — its label for Precision Scheduled Railroading-style changes — is that it has spun off its communication and signals group, historically part of its engineering […]
Ron Batory, Federal Railroad Administration administrator TRAINS: David Lassen CORONADO, Calif. — Ron Batory, head of the Federal Railroad Administration, was one of the final-day speakers at the National Railroad Construction and Maintenance Association Conference that concluded Wednesday. At the beginning of his talk, he said wanted to leave time for questions from the audience. […]
