News Wire: NS adds crews, reopens through route to ease congestion in South

[Brian Schmidt]

NORFOLK, Va. — Norfolk Southern is taking steps to unclog congested areas of its system in Alabama and Georgia, where a combination of traffic growth and bad weather have gummed up yards and single-track main lines. For the year-to-date compar...

http://trn.trains.com/news/news-wire/2018/02/27-norfolk-southern-adds-crews-reopens-through-route-to-ease-congestion-in-south

[blue streak 1]

Maybe these changes will improve the Crescent's OTP ?

[466lex]

“In the ditch” seems to describe NS service, remarkably following CSX’s ignoble derail.  How is this possible?  No EHH to blame.  Oltmannd can probably give useful insight.

 

In the meantime, tracking my Class 1s “going out of business profitably” timeline, the two eastern biggies are leading the pack:  Combined annual Carloads (no IM) for NS and CSX are down 28% since the year 2000.

 

But, hold on, the pace is increasing:  First eight weeks of 2018 are down 33% from the 2000 annual weekly rate.  (Hump yard closings, anyone?)

 

But “’Profitably’”?, you ask.  Revenue per carload in the East is up more than 110% over those 17 years.

 

But, man, the fighting in the “ditch” has turned muddy!  You may have noticed that chemicals shippers have been highly vocal with their complaints to the STB and trade press about CSX failings.  Well, it seems there is a “curses on both your houses”:  Chemical carloads are down 3.4% in the East, 2018/2017.  But the “split” is fascinating:  CSX is down 11.4%, with NS is up 8.1%.

 

For all Carload traffic, CSX is down 9.3%; NS down “only” 5.0% so far in 2018.  Pick a “winner”!

 

A grimly fascinating picture has emerged in the East:  Jack up per Carload revenue faster than shippers can divert from the dinosaur-like writhings of 12,000 foot, DPU-laced, service monstrosities on 28-hour “days.”  What logisitics universe do CSX and NS believe they exist in?

  

What Staggers hath wrought!

[oltmannd]

The "drive to 65" OR is partly to blame - and forgetting the lessons of 2014/15.  If you cut resources too close and run too close to capacity (and I mean crews for the main and yards, most likely), any hiccup will cause a "traffic jam" and put you in the ditch.

I'm not buying the "traffic bump" story at all.  It's the carload side that's in trouble and its growth has been almost nothing.

Digging out is very expensive compared to keeping some margin of capacity.

This has been both interesting and sad to watch happen.

[blue streak 1]

Oltmannd:   what would it take for NS to enlarge the 2 C of GA tunnels to plate "H" clearances.  Would the effort and time pay off to allow more by-passing of ATL be worth it ?  Have no idea what those tunnels look like and their dimensions ?  Would that route work for all regular trains that would need the power to get out of BHM ?

 

EDIT: Any other clearance problems on that route ? What about signaling ?

There is the street running in Columbus. 

[oltmannd]

blue streak 1

Oltmannd:   what would it take for NS to enlarge the 2 C of GA tunnels to plate "H" clearances.  Would the effort and time pay off to allow more by-passing of ATL be worth it ?  Have no idea what those tunnels look like and their dimensions ?  Would that route work for all regular trains that would need the power to get out of BHM ?

 

EDIT: Any other clearance problems on that route ? What about signaling ?

There is the street running in Columbus. 

 

Mainline capacity is not the problem.  There's been no real change in train counts for years.   It's the yards and terminals that can't process the traffic.  The CofG thing is really minor and temporary.  It just gets a train or two a day out of the congested Atlanta terminal.

[oltmannd]

466lex

  Chemical carloads are down 3.4% in the East, 2018/2017.  But the “split” is fascinating:  CSX is down 11.4%, with NS is up 8.1%.  

In the Conrail split, CSX came away with the bulk of the Texas/NJ chem traffic.  UP/BNSF over Salem was a better deal for UP and BNSF than NS over New Orleans and since that's where the bulk of the traffic originated....

...it didn't matter that the NS route was shorter.

My mantra remains the same.  RRs better figure out how to get from "general merchandise - centric" with intermodal added in, to "intermodal centric" with boutique merchandise added in.  The trends have been clear for decades, now.

[jeffhergert]

EHH may be gone, but his legacy lives on.  Except for BNSF, all the major carriers are doing similar things to what EHH did at CSX, and CP before that.  My supervisor at my biannual employee developement said they (managment, at least field level) hoped with EHH gone that things would let up.  Note that I don't work for CSX.

EHH may have been the greatest practitioner of cutting your way to short term prosperity, but he is by no means the only one doing it.  Does "Drive to 65" OR or "G-55+0" OR sound like they are similar?  Truth is it isn't really EHH that has caused this.  He was just the guy with the best PR to implement managment practices like those to boost stock prices for short term gain.  The ones who are really driving this are the short term "activist investors."  EHH may be gone, but they aren't.  And they still want the largest returns ASAP, to heck with tomorrow.

Jeff 

[BaltACD]

jeffhergert

EHH may have been the greatest practitioner of cutting your way to short term prosperity, but he is by no means the only one doing it.  Does "Drive to 65" OR or "G-55+0" OR sound like they are similar?  Truth is it isn't really EHH that has caused this.  He was just the guy with the best PR to implement managment practices like those to boost stock prices for short term gain.  The ones who are really driving this are the short term "activist investors."  EHH may be gone, but they aren't.  And they still want the largest returns ASAP, to heck with tomorrow.

Jeff 

And in doing so, the 'activist investors' are on the path to create another Pennsylvania and New Your Central morphing into Penn Central.

Those companies looted their properties to keep paying investors their dividends until the companies were the walking dead, a shell of a company - and then they merged and the blood bath began in earnest!