by RMB357
There is no question that E.Hunter Harrison will be transforming CSX into his precision railroading model / scheduling system and it already has begun. He has closed the hump at Stanley yard and is now allowing crews to step off moving equipment in order to speed up switching and yard dwell times for cars.
It's not secret what he has done at Illinois Central, Canadian National and Canadian Pacific railways. What we haven't seen yet in NYS is what is planned. How many secondary lines, branches and yards will be shuttered, sold or leased. Because of the high taxes on the railroads in NYS, I have my fears much is on the slicing platter. I don't see him keeping three major yards between Buffalo and Selkirk. Selling off real estate is in his books for maintaining a low operating ratio, also running less locomotives than he thinks are needed and less than high profit lines or redundancy is out of the question for him. Will the West Shore survive? How about the Montreal Sub, will that get leased to another operator and CSX or runs the stacks? Will he single track the belt line, Niagara Branch only to keep it for a down the road but eventual second shot at a merger with CPR, run by his son in law Keith Creel? Many unanswered and remained to be seen questions.
How will NS fare with all this? One of the by products of precision railroading has been unsatisfactory customer service over the years and a non dedication to unit trains. He will think nothing of throwing miscellaneous freight on the end of a high speed stack train, keeping it at 50 mph. NS can and should capitalize on this issue. The problem with NS is three-dimensional in NYS.
The first is CP draw in Buffalo and the bottleneck it creates. CSX runs it and can let the NS traffic sit. NS must get this addressed soon to allow the free flow of the east/west traffic from the Southern tier line to the old Nickel Plate and points west. The second is already being addressed at Portage Viaduct which will eliminate another bottleneck when the new bridge is finished. The third is for efficiency and this might be the hardest, NS must find a way to get at least there intermodal trains from Buffalo to Albany with one crew, eliminating the crew change in Binghamton. That means running 60 mph wherever and whenever they can on the tier and the old D&H. I've seen more than once the 205/206 delayed for a few hours for a new crew. If NS wants to ring the efficiencies out of the D&H and justify the 300 million spent to by it they have to be able to compete with what CSX is going to do.
The Port of Boston is getting big money for expansion and the Patriot Corridor should benefit from that. If NS is aggressive and can get rid of these deficiencies, there is no reason why it isn't feasible to see a much higher number of trains / traffic on the Southern Tier line and the ex D&H that was originally forecasted prior to the Conrail takeover.
It's not secret what he has done at Illinois Central, Canadian National and Canadian Pacific railways. What we haven't seen yet in NYS is what is planned. How many secondary lines, branches and yards will be shuttered, sold or leased. Because of the high taxes on the railroads in NYS, I have my fears much is on the slicing platter. I don't see him keeping three major yards between Buffalo and Selkirk. Selling off real estate is in his books for maintaining a low operating ratio, also running less locomotives than he thinks are needed and less than high profit lines or redundancy is out of the question for him. Will the West Shore survive? How about the Montreal Sub, will that get leased to another operator and CSX or runs the stacks? Will he single track the belt line, Niagara Branch only to keep it for a down the road but eventual second shot at a merger with CPR, run by his son in law Keith Creel? Many unanswered and remained to be seen questions.
How will NS fare with all this? One of the by products of precision railroading has been unsatisfactory customer service over the years and a non dedication to unit trains. He will think nothing of throwing miscellaneous freight on the end of a high speed stack train, keeping it at 50 mph. NS can and should capitalize on this issue. The problem with NS is three-dimensional in NYS.
The first is CP draw in Buffalo and the bottleneck it creates. CSX runs it and can let the NS traffic sit. NS must get this addressed soon to allow the free flow of the east/west traffic from the Southern tier line to the old Nickel Plate and points west. The second is already being addressed at Portage Viaduct which will eliminate another bottleneck when the new bridge is finished. The third is for efficiency and this might be the hardest, NS must find a way to get at least there intermodal trains from Buffalo to Albany with one crew, eliminating the crew change in Binghamton. That means running 60 mph wherever and whenever they can on the tier and the old D&H. I've seen more than once the 205/206 delayed for a few hours for a new crew. If NS wants to ring the efficiencies out of the D&H and justify the 300 million spent to by it they have to be able to compete with what CSX is going to do.
The Port of Boston is getting big money for expansion and the Patriot Corridor should benefit from that. If NS is aggressive and can get rid of these deficiencies, there is no reason why it isn't feasible to see a much higher number of trains / traffic on the Southern Tier line and the ex D&H that was originally forecasted prior to the Conrail takeover.
Last edited by RMB357 on Sat Apr 01, 2017 5:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.