Traffic on HorseShoe Curve

[carajul]

I was reading that in the late 1970s there were still around 100 trains/day on HSC. Why has the # dropped to half that today? Did CR and NS reroute the traffic elsewhere?

[mcgrath618]

A combo of a lot of things.
For starters, with PSR there will be less trains. Period.

Secondly (though this isn't as much of a contributor ), Amtrak only runs two trains (one each way) across the curve, while in the late 70s they had more.

[johnpbarlow]

There are likely fewer coal trains running today around the Curve. Also, I'm guessing the steel industry in and around Pittsburgh/Youngstown, that received unit trains of imported iron ore from the Philadelphia ore dock, was more active than it is today. And there more auto assembly facilities served by Conrail (eg, Metuchen NJ, Newark DE) that have long been closed. Net: there used to be a lot more heavy manufacturing in the mid Atlantic states served by Conrail in the late '70s than exists today.

[WashingtonPark]

A combo of a lot of things.
For starters, with PSR there will be less trains. Period.

I would think you've got it. In the 70s we'd see few trains over 100 cars. Now we see few less than 100.

[njtmnrrbuff]

Even after the steel mills have shuttered their doors, there is still a lot of freight train traffic over the curve. I was there last June for maybe an hour during the middle of the day and there were many freights.

[SecaucusJunction]

It’s simple really. Some of the traffic dissolved and now the railroads have little to no interest in going after new traffic. Intermodal could be 10x bigger than it is with the right investments. Nowadays they would rather slash slash slash to make a profit rather than grow for the long term.

[ExCon90]

I'm a bit late to the party, but with the formation of Penn Central there was a concerted effort to shift through traffic from the mountains to the Water Level Route. At the time of the merger the PRR was in the early stages of planning an Allegheny basis tunnel, any need for which was obviated by the merger.

[QB 52.32]

A huge positive came out of Conrail VP-Intermodal J.P. Sammon's strategic decision to pursue clearing the Pittsburgh line for full domestic stack (and with it fully-enclosed autoracks) in the early '90's and in concert with the Harrisburg-area's rise to become a huge distribution center and small-shipment break serving the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic region. Of course, if you define traffic as "trains", such a large productivity and traffic producer as this initiative does not necessarily convert 1:1, but that's a good thing for the railroad, if not as much for fans.