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Late CSX Transportation CEO E. Hunter Harrison speaks before the Surface Transportation Board in 2017. A railroad executive now says Harrison is not the inventor of Precision Scheduled Railroading. R.G. Edmonson BALTIMORE — E. Hunter Harrison may have written the book on Precision Scheduled Railroading. But the late chief executive is not the creator of […]
BALTIMORE — Precision Scheduled Railroading ultimately improves railroad service by making transit times more consistent, shippers and a company that tracks rail shipments say. Getting there, however, is not easy. That’s because PSR aims to change 150 years of learned behavior in 150 days, which initially disrupts the railroad, says Ken Sherman, vice president and […]
With overall rail traffic down in the first quarter, only two of the big six Class I railroad systems — Canadian National and Norfolk Southern — managed volume gains through the first three months of 2019. CN’s volume was up 1 percent, while NS eked out a 0.4% gain, according to a review of Association […]
Association of American Railroads WASHINGTON — The Association of American Railroads today reported U.S. rail traffic for the week ending March 30, as well as volumes for March 2019. U.S. railroads originated 957,144 carloads in March 2019, down 8.9 percent, or 93,616 carloads, from March 2018. U.S. railroads also originated 1,065,790 containers and trailers in […]
A Triple Crown trailer train heads westbound out of Huntington, Ind., in September 2015. 15273-21 Randy Olson Question: I occasionally see Triple Crown semi-trailer trains on a route that runs near Decatur, Ill. Since these trailers are attached directly to one another and are not on flatcars, how are the frames of these trailers reinforced […]
President Donald Trump The White House WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s threat to close the border with Mexico this week would quickly have an impact on railroads and wreak economic havoc on both sides of the Rio Grande. Cross-border traffic represents about 11 percent of Union Pacific’s total volume and nearly 30 percent of volume […]
Union Pacific CEO Lance Fritz Union Pacific OMAHA, Neb. — Union Pacific has slowed work on the new hump yard it is building near Hearne, Texas, and no longer has a firm opening date for the $550-million Brazos Yard. UP now has about 90 contractors working on the yard, down from 300. Crews were aiming […]
Missouri-Kansas-Texas drovers’ caboose No. 350 shows off the car’s extra length. The cars could accommodate extra riders overseeing livestock shipments. Harold Schupp Q Where, in the train’s consist, were drovers’ cabooses placed? Were they at the rear with the regular caboose, or somewhere in the train’s consist near the stock cars? Were they used only […]
CSX train Q-032, with a single unit on the point, crosses Rail Lane with a mix of COFC/TOFC on the Philadelphia Subdivision at Elk Mills, Md, on Feb. 16, 2019 … Michael S. Murray … and another single unit, operating as distributed power, is midtrain. CSX is increasing its use of distributed power as part […]
Association of American Railroads WASHINGTON — The Association of American Railroads today reported U.S. rail traffic for the week ending March 23. For this week, total U.S. weekly rail traffic was 503,017 carloads and intermodal units, down 4.5 percent compared with the same week last year. Total carloads for the week ending March 23 were […]
BNSF Railway ES44DC No. 7765 leads an intermodal train through a curved main line at Siberia, Calif., in September 2008. 08357-7 Steve Schmollinger Question: In many photos taken on open land in the West and Midwest, you can see curvature in the tracks even though there are no visible obstacles such as rock cuts, rivers, […]
The increased use of locally mined frac sand in America’s largest shale oil field, the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico, is rapidly crowding out rail-hauled sand from the Midwest. On Union Pacific, for example, frac sand volume was down 45 percent this year through the first week of March, a trend the railroad […]
