By Roy Blanchard CSX leads off the railroads’ earnings season with record first-quarter revenue, operating income and operating ratio. Total freight revenue increased 11 percent to $2.5 billion as merchandise carloads (all but coal and intermodal increased to 55 percent of the total and coal dipped to...

By Roy Blanchard In an earlier post Fred Frailey comments on the traffic gains the Class I railroads are seeing as we begin to come out of the economic downturn that started more than two years ago. Shortline and regional railroads are seeing better days too -- not surprising since roughly 20 percent...

Posted by Roy Blanchard Union Pacific stepped up to the quarterly earnings plate Thursday and, like CSX, knocked the first pitch out of the park. It’s a case of doing many things right. Operating income was up 47 percent to $988 million on a 16 percent revenue increase to $4 billion. Operating expense...

Posted by Roy Blanchard New Jersey Transit Train 3930 runs express from Trenton, N.J., to New York Penn Station, covering the 50 miles in 70 minutes. It departs Trenton at 8:09 a.m., arriving at Penn at 9:19 a.m. with three station stops: Hamilton, Princeton Junction, and Newark. For those of us in Philadelphia...

By Roy Blanchard ”
That’s what Mark Murawski, transportation planner for the Lycoming County (Pennsylvania) Planning Commission said at the 2010 Pennsylvania Freight Seminar, an annual affair of the Pennsylvania Rail Freight Advisory Committee. Murawski was speaking as a panelist on "Railroads and...

By Roy Blanchard It's early June and I'm in Calgary, Alberta to attend the 2010 Canadian Pacific Investors Day program. Day One was the usual collection of presentations from the CP senior staff about matters marketing, financial and operations. Today is Day Two, the Royal Canadian Pacific (...

By Roy Blanchard Winchester, Va., July 10, 2010. Norfolk Southern’s former Norfolk & Western Shenandoah Valley line has long been a favorite. Today I visited the line from Riverton Jct., Va., just north of Front Royal, to see how the Crescent Corridor improvements have changed the line since I first...