ATLANTA — Norfolk Southern has tightened its train makeup standards for long, heavy trains in order to reduce the in-train forces that can cause derailments.
The new restrictions — part of the railroad’s broader push on safety in the wake of the disastrous Feb. 3 derailment in East Palestine, Ohio — have caused significant increases in terminal dwell, slowed the merchandise and bulk networks, and clobbered on-time performance for merchandise shipments.
The railroad’s key performance and service metrics had already been deteriorating this year due to the impact of the East Palestine derailment, harsh winter weather, and a bridge outage.
NS warned customers in a March 31 advisory that service won’t improve overnight. “As the benefits of these changes materialize, we are confident we will see service improve over the next few months,” NS said.
Norfolk Southern has been under intense scrutiny since the East Palestine derailment. The Federal Railroad Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have both launched separate investigations of the railroad’s safety practices, and two Senate committees grilled CEO Alan Shaw last month.
The railroad’s new train building guidelines come after in-train forces contributed to the March 4 wreck of a 212-car merchandise train in Springfield, Ohio, and the March 9 derailment of a 108-car merchandise train in Anniston, Ala.
NS began changing its train-building standards systemwide several weeks before the FRA issued its April 7 safety advisory calling on railroads to address the safety risks of how they build long trains.
“Since the implementation of our new operating plan TOP | SPG last year, we’ve been studying the way trains operate across our network. With safety and continuous improvement in mind, we introduced a number of operational changes in March that address the way trains are built with the goal of minimizing train incidents, including derailments, by managing potential in-train forces,” NS spokesman Connor Spielmaker says. “Trains over certain lengths and weights, for example, require the use of distributed power units. We’ve also adjusted the positioning of lighter and heavier cars to further manage weight distribution in trains, as well as the positioning of cars equipped with cushioning devices to further manage slack.”
NS merchandise trains over 10,000 feet or 14,000 tons are now required to operate with distributed power, which can reduce in-train forces. Intermodal trains, which have less slack than merchandise trains, require distributed power if their length exceeds 12,000 feet or 14,000 tons.
The train make-up rules require empty cars to be toward the back of the train and also restrict the placement of other types of cars, such as multilevels. As a result, it can take longer to build trains due to the extra switching required. If distributed power is not available, trains either have to leave tonnage behind or under certain circumstances can operate at reduced maximum track speeds, both of which reduce in-train forces.
Ultimately, NS wants to create route-by-route standards that would be more strict on main lines with grades, undulating terrain, significant curvature or a combination of these factors.
An unintended consequence of the train makeup restrictions is their impact on the railroad’s key performance metrics.
Systemwide terminal dwell increased to 32.5 hours for the week ending March 31, with cars spending more than 40 hours at six yards: Bellevue, Ohio; Birmingham, Ala.; Chattanooga, Tenn.; Decatur, Ill.; Macon, Ga.; and New Orleans. At the end of January, overall dwell was 24.6 hours and no yard was higher than 37.5 hours.
Merchandise train speed averaged just 14 mph for the week ending March 31, down 23% from the first week in March. Average velocity for unit grain trains tumbled to 13.7 mph from a year to date high of 19 mph for the week ending March 17.
On-time performance for merchandise shipments fell to 51% for the week ending March 31. The railroad entered 2023 with more than 80% of merchandise shipments arriving within 24 hours of original estimates.
Norfolk Southern’s intermodal network seems immune: Average train speed has held up, and in the last week of March was 25.3 mph, with 97% of trains arriving within 24 hours of the original estimate.
“We think NS is right to take some time to make some tough decisions and implement changes, even if it causes some short term pain, in an effort to build a more resilient platform that will benefit customers and shareholders over the longer term, but it does add to the current industry quagmire,” Loop Capital Markets analyst Rick Paterson wrote in a note to clients.
NS says it remains committed to its goals of providing consistent and reliable service over the long term.
“Last December we announced a new strategy built around reliable and resilient service for our customers as an enduring competitive advantage for Norfolk Southern. We remain committed to that strategy and confident in its execution,” NS told customers in its March 31 advisory.
I agree with Jeffrey regulate train size go back to regular size train lengths you save time and money in making up these long trains at the yards, and waiting to get into yards and waiting at sidings for trains to pass, you might need more crews but think of the time and money you’re saving, I seen trains crews waiting for hours to continue their trip such a waste!
You build the biggest possible train to move with minimum power and crew. The complaint from shippers is missed shipments. Regional railroads complain about complete missed deliveries or pickups. You shut down hump yards to eliminate switching and personnel and now your container cargo is stuck out on the road. However profits are up.
Now they need to shift cars around to fit the draw bar load factors and splice in DPU’s in the right spot and right amount. Of course that means cars are no longer placed by block so that requires intermediate sorting to get each block together. The real fix is to go to shorter trains so car sorting via destination blocks and weight factors is better which means better train handling . That means hedge fund investors see short term profits goes down so they will nix it.
“Norfolk Southern’s intermodal network seems immune: Average train speed has held up, and in the last week of March was 25.3 mph, with 97% of trains arriving within 24 hours of the original estimate.”
Have service standards fallen so far that a 24 hour delay on your highest priority, premium trains is acceptable? What does that tell your customers, the very reason you’re in business, about your priorities?
Has anyone ever thought about placing the power in the middle of the train. Then having an engine less cab on the front end for a crew cab? The platform could also be equipped with track defect sensors.
I am not any kind of experienced railroader. My thoughts are simply out of the box.
Has anyone ever thought about placing the power in the middle of the train. Then having a shove platform on the front end for a crew cab?
I am not any kind of experienced railroader. My thoughts are simply out of the box.
You have your train building rules in place BEFORE you implement DPU! They are very territory dependent. Not an easy thing to do.
Unless your cult of personality operating philosophy likes to ignore physics.
The tough part is, this stuff is modellable, but not in anywhere near real time, so you have to have rules-based stuff. Train-track dynamic issues tend to belong to Mechanical or the Research Lab – not the operating department.
You knew NS was in a bad place when they popped an empty off on Horseshoe Curve ….TWICE. Basic mountain railroading, forgotten.
The chaos created by EHH, PSR, and massive hedge-fund ownership have brought the class 1’s to this sorry state. Hopefully, some strong and reinforced pressure from FRA will slowly have an effect on their sclerotic managements.
Limiting train length will also speed up the over all time it takes to run a division. Believe it or not. So will assigning enough horsepower for trains to maintain track speed. And yep, lumber spine and other light weight cars go on the rear.
Someone pointed out: 315k # cars 4 axels have each wheel load of 39,375#.
A 286k # 4 axel car has wheel load of 35,750 #s. Given a possible 10% misloading of any car the max wheel load might be 43,312 #s.
When a wheel passes over any inch of rail the rail is going to deflect some quantity. After the wheel passes the rail will spring back some value. That movement will cause the rail to heat also some value. So how much does the rail heat after say 600 wheels passes on 12,000 feet of rail. Is that enough to cause a heat kink sometimes?
Thinking of the Builder derailment that encountered a small deflection of track as it followed a freight train.
There are so many variables to this type of event. Air temp, rail temp, wind, balance temp of rail, rail weight, web thickness, location of internal defects, how many wheel defects have occurred, cross tie defects with how many close together, rail anchors, ballast condition, etc.
The recent derailment in Pittsburgh, by the photos, looks like a string line derailment. So are they really changing how they block trains? Yes. Run more, shorter trains, with enough power to run track speed. It works!!!! And, has anyone questioned the original excuse of a loose wheel in the Springfield derailment? It was obvious from the dash cam it was buff forces lifting the cars up.
James,
To me the dash cam video shows a car jumping up as the out of gauge wheels hit the crossing. I don’t believe the AAR would have ordered the immediate inspection of about 650 rail cars if there wasn’t some very convincing evidence that there was problem with that group of wheelsets.
Charlie Powell
Being familiar with the C35 train that derailed at CP Esplen in Pittsburgh. Yes, it looks like a stringline derailment but I doubt it is. C35 is a local running from COnway to SHire Oaks, with most of its train empty cars for the Union RR at Kenny, PA. It is usually a pretty short train, a mile long at most and usually much shorter. It’s not the sort of train that should stringline on a curve where trains three times as long have run without incident. The cause of this derailment has to be something else.
As the hedge fund managers demand answers from NS and call for a special election to pick a new Board…to be continued.
“As a result, it can take longer to build trains due to the extra switching required. If distributed power is not available, trains either have to leave tonnage behind or under certain circumstances can operate at reduced maximum track speeds, both of which reduce in-train forces.”
Already making excuses for doing the right thing… So what if it takes longer…at least it will get there in one piece. The railroads are great at saying their employees are “Number One” but when they don’t listen to what they say, that kind of makes that claim a “Hollow One.” What they really mean is their investors are number one, even if short changing on maintenance and safety and their employees lives gets in the way of that!
212 cars!! I ran one hundred car trains and that was too long w/o distributed power. Obviously, limiting train length would eliminate many delays and accidents.
But that won’t happen since it requires more crews. Management still wants one man crews which is an accident waiting to happen.
Geee, that was the reason we ran SHORTER trains in the first place! Sure you can just tag more and more cars onto a train but when you do power placement comes to the forefront as does train makeup. Not that hard to figure out.
And I notice in many derailments there seems to be empty center spine lumber cars involved and right at the front of the derailment. The Franklin Park one on Youtube last week on CP. The stringline at Kansas City under the bridges a couple years back….
maybe NS and the rest of the class ones should go back to running shorter trains more frequently. it would save alot of yard switching on both ends and the customer would get there cars in a more timely manner. yes it would mean more crews and locomotives, but shouldn’t the customer come first and not the worship of Wall st?
At the risk of repeating myself, the Claytor Brothers are turning over in their graves.
Hard to be impressed by such a management as Norfolk Southern. Hopefully strict legislation directs the FRA (the ones that seek voluntary compliance for most everything) to impose strict operating and staffing standards with substantial fines for noncompliance.
I dealt with NS a fair amount last decade overseeing HV movements over the network. It made me question how tight railroad operations really were. Now, in less than ten years they have swung to the other extreme.
Why not limit train length to say 8000 feet? More trains and crews called for sure, but fewer meets requiring two sidings, quicker meets, and improved transit times.
TL:DR, we’re going to waste even more of our customers’ time while not correcting the root of the problem
Just drop the guillotine on them and impose the train-length restrictions.
That’s a Rog’, don’t give them a choice… They have already shown by their actions that only force will make them do what is right.