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The death of a good idea

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Posted by BaltACD on Monday, June 3, 2019 5:35 PM

oltmannd
 
BaltACD

Figures lie, liars figure - EHH was a figuring liar - thus he could not use the same basis for numbers that everyone else used. 

Foggy and opaque.  Wanna buy a timeshare?

Nope!

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

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Posted by oltmannd on Monday, June 3, 2019 5:13 PM

BaltACD

Figures lie, liars figure - EHH was a figuring liar - thus he could not use the same basis for numbers that everyone else used.

 

Foggy and opaque.  Wanna buy a timeshare?

-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/

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Posted by oltmannd on Monday, June 3, 2019 4:10 PM

ns145

 

 
Overmod

 

 
ns145
Not quite as slick or as easy to use as the RPM website, but you can view every Class I railroad's cooked performance data, plus manipulated stats for the Chicago terminal, in a standardized format.

 

Fixed that for ya. Wink

 

 

 

The STB data is not as cooked or manipulated as the data posted on some of the Class I's own websites (check out CSX's latest metrics, for example).  The whole point of the STB's EP724 rule was to collect and publish standardized service metrics for all of the Class I's following the widespread service collapse in 2014.  That said, I'm am not naive enough to think that the railroads don't shade the truth in the STB metrics to their own benefit.  However, even the EHH PSR roads that pulled out of RPM are required to report performance data congruent with their peers to the both the STB and the public.  That is at least a partial win for shippers and industry observers.  RPM disappearing isn't the end of the world.

 

I know that the STB numbers are for train speed and dwell are exactly the RPM numbers, at least for NS.

One of the best RPM measure - from a consistency point of view - was cars on line.  In later years, the roads just let Railinc do it.  They have every reported event for every car.  The roads just have the offline ones they subscribe to.

-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/

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Posted by oltmannd on Monday, June 3, 2019 4:02 PM

BaltACD

When I was at the CSX Operations Center in the 1990's and early 2000's there was one 'Superintendent of Merchandise Operations' that was hated by her superiors - she refused to 'fudge the facts'.  To her the facts were what they were and she refused to 'gild the lilly' in reporting those fact; however, she was only one among many that did polish the numbers.

 

Rule number one.  Don't manually touch the data.  

Rule number two.  Remove bad data through a proven set of rules.  e.g. You can drop train movement segments where the speed is greater than maximum track speed.  You can drop dwell data showing negative dwell.

Rule number three.  Stick to your guns. I did this at Conrail and NS since the mid 90s.  Almost no pushback.  (although NS was more cranky about it than Conrail.)

-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/

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Posted by oltmannd on Monday, June 3, 2019 3:53 PM

ns145

Well, the STB still has their Rail Service website that all the Class I's must submit data to: https://www.stb.gov/stb/railserviceissues/rail_service_reports.html#loaded

Not quite as slick or as easy to use as the RPM website, but you can view every Class I railroad's performance data, plus stats for the Chicago terminal, in a standardized format.

 

A spreadsheet a week per road.  Yuck.  Build your own database.....

-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/

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Posted by BaltACD on Monday, June 3, 2019 11:31 AM

When I was at the CSX Operations Center in the 1990's and early 2000's there was one 'Superintendent of Merchandise Operations' that was hated by her superiors - she refused to 'fudge the facts'.  To her the facts were what they were and she refused to 'gild the lilly' in reporting those fact; however, she was only one among many that did polish the numbers.

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

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Posted by ns145 on Monday, June 3, 2019 11:24 AM

Overmod

 

 
ns145
Not quite as slick or as easy to use as the RPM website, but you can view every Class I railroad's cooked performance data, plus manipulated stats for the Chicago terminal, in a standardized format.

 

Fixed that for ya. Wink

 

The STB data is not as cooked or manipulated as the data posted on some of the Class I's own websites (check out CSX's latest metrics, for example).  The whole point of the STB's EP724 rule was to collect and publish standardized service metrics for all of the Class I's following the widespread service collapse in 2014.  That said, I'm am not naive enough to think that the railroads don't shade the truth in the STB metrics to their own benefit.  However, even the EHH PSR roads that pulled out of RPM are required to report performance data congruent with their peers to the both the STB and the public.  That is at least a partial win for shippers and industry observers.  RPM disappearing isn't the end of the world.

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Posted by Overmod on Monday, June 3, 2019 10:11 AM

ns145
Not quite as slick or as easy to use as the RPM website, but you can view every Class I railroad's cooked performance data, plus manipulated stats for the Chicago terminal, in a standardized format.

Fixed that for ya. Wink

  • Member since
    May 2003
  • From: US
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Posted by BaltACD on Monday, June 3, 2019 10:08 AM

Figures lie, liars figure - EHH was a figuring liar - thus he could not use the same basis for numbers that everyone else used.

Never too old to have a happy childhood!

              

  • Member since
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Posted by ns145 on Monday, June 3, 2019 10:04 AM

Well, the STB still has their Rail Service website that all the Class I's must submit data to: https://www.stb.gov/stb/railserviceissues/rail_service_reports.html#loaded

Not quite as slick or as easy to use as the RPM website, but you can view every Class I railroad's performance data, plus stats for the Chicago terminal, in a standardized format.

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    September 2003
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Posted by Overmod on Monday, June 3, 2019 9:42 AM

oltmannd
You can still get metrics at the individual road web sites, but it's much harder to compare trends, particularly for us "just curious" folk. The industry was really trying to become transparent.  The metrics were a decent view into the "machinery".  I thought they were a great idea.  It's sad to see them go.

As with the Milwaukee Road electrification, they're pulling the plug right at the time they've become (apparently unwittingly) one of the most important strategic tools for the prospective 'reregulation' of some aspects of rail transportation coming out of the current PSR shipper discontent.  "If it does not exist then, it will have to be reinvented" -- perhaps with better analysis and a hard limit on uncomplaining acceptance of 'official company numbers' cooked with more regard to scheming and less to objectivity than typical cell-phone plans.  So I would not necessarily mourn the departure of railroadpm -- you will see something like it, or better, again...

I can dream, can't I?

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The death of a good idea
Posted by oltmannd on Monday, June 3, 2019 9:25 AM

http://www.railroadpm.org/

is dying.  It will be dead in July.

It was born after CSX and NS botched the Conrail split, which was right on the heals of the UP-SP mess.

The STB had ordered some public metrics as part of merger and shortly after, the AAR thought they could catch up and get ahead of the issue by having all the railroads publish a more-or-less standard set of metrics.

The metrics experts of each road met with the AAR and created standard definitions and the method of publishing them.  They agree to car dwell at terminals, cars on line, and train speed by train type.

There were some minor differences between the roads over the definitions of the events that defined the measures, but the amount of commonality was rather surprising - and each road had the option of describing in detail how the measure was calculated.

The Wall Street folk, in particular, gobbled them up and baked them into their valuation calculations

It all really came off without a hitch and continued that way until....

PSR came to the CN.  EHH pulled the CN out of the metrics because they didn't match the way he liked to view them - terminal dwell in particular.  He wanted all the dwell, even for cars moving through a terminal on the same train.  It's a fine way to look at it, but you really have to take that measure and break it into pieces for it to be actionable.  The "car sorting" process is fundamentally different than the "crew change dwell" process - especially if you want to assign action to an individual process owner.  So, CN COULD have kept up with the reporting....

So, the metric had everyone but CN.

Until.... PSR came to CP.  

....and CSX

....and KCS

(although CN came back for a while)

So, finally it was down to the rational few:  UP, BNSF and NS (although it looks like NS has been messing around with their dwell measure).

...and they decided to pull the plug.  

You can still get metrics at the individual road web sites, but it's much harder to compare trends, particularly for us "just curious" folk.

The industry was really trying to become transparent.  The metrics were a decent view into the "machinery".  I thought they were a great idea.  It's sad to see them go.

-Don (Random stuff, mostly about trains - what else? http://blerfblog.blogspot.com/

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