LAKE GENEVA, Wis. — Canadian National leaders are working on a new operating plan that could be unveiled as soon as this fall, says one executive. Doug MacDonald, CN's vice president of bulk products, told attendees of the Midwest Association...
http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2018/07/18-executive-cn-working-on-new-operating-plan-to-return-to-its-roots
Brian Schmidt, Editor, Classic Trains magazine
Sounds to me as if they got away from the precision scheduled model and want to go back to that.. so back to EHH and his ideas. They need to do something.. their main competitor, CP, is no longer a sleepy pussycat but a raging ferocious tiger.
If they're doing a lot of hiring, I would opine that they found that lean and mean wasn't doing the trick.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
Ulrich Sounds to me as if they got away from the precision scheduled model and want to go back to that.. so back to EHH and his ideas. They need to do something.. their main competitor, CP, is no longer a sleepy pussycat but a raging ferocious tiger.
I think you are right. McDonald: "We are not the scheduled railway we used to be and a lot of that is because of the infrastructure issues we have."
Even when CN was a "scheduled" railway with Hunter at the helm things were still regularly in disarray, with late trains, PO'd customers and cars showing up whenever they pleased.
It will be difficult to maintain any form of scheduled railroading until the congestion problems are resolved.
As I have said before, VIA is the canary in CN's coal mine. Even now most freights are running even later than the Canadian.
Greetings from Alberta
-an Articulate Malcontent
What I have seen of EHH's PSR - If you can't meet the traditionally accepted metrix, change the measures to something that you can lie your way to meeting an report them, even though there is no correlation to the previous industry accepted standards.
So - are you lying now or were you lying then or are both lies.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
BaltACD So - are you lying now or were you lying then or are both lies.
"As long as I get my bonus who cares!"
-every manager
BaltACD What I have seen of EHH's PSR - If you can't meet the traditionally accepted metrix, change the measures to something that you can lie your way to meeting an report them, even though there is no correlation to the previous industry accepted standards.
And if stuff falls really far behind just re-tag it.
That's not yesterday's 23-hour late train, it's today's train and it's one hour early!
Magic I tell 'ya!
This paragraph from the Trains news story tells me that they're reaching back to roots which largely pre-date EHH:
"CN is hiring crews throughout its network, and MacDonald says the railroad has hired 1,000 new people in Wisconsin and Minnesota alone. Despite that hiring pace, MacDonald says about 30 percent of new hires leave training in the first year — meaning that the railroad expects to continue hiring. This is in addition to tens of millions of dollars in new double-track and longer sidings the railroad is investing throughout its network."
Downsizing the payroll and ripping up segments of second main track were hallmarks of EHH's approach at BN, CN, and CP. At CN, he extended the length of some sidings to accommodate longer trains, but did so by utilizing rail lifted from other sidings in between. Meeting points for bigger trains are less of a win when you increase the distance and running times between meeting points, at least on a railroad with any reasonable measure of traffic. Even more so when those trains are assigned the minimal HP to get them across the road.
EHH has been long gone from CN, and current hiring trends therefore likely don't run contrary to his vision or reflect any corrective action to cuts that were made over a decade ago. The cuts he made were needed.. then. But this is now, and sooner or later the railroad would have to hire more people. No one, not even EHH envisioned no more hiring ever again. And who knows... if these current trade disputes aren't resolved quickly CN might once again need to look at its hiring numbers.. less trade means less freight to move..and fewer crews needed.
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