Eastern Railroad Discussion > Phantom vacancies or how low can you go?

The bnsf web-site shows their hiring conductors for Centralia,IL. That's really amazing considering most everyone there understands the place will be a ghost town come December-04. Effective Jan-05 the UP has the coal contract for Cook. Many of us have often wondered if there's tax-breaks that encourages the bnsf to continue this ugly practice. (over-hiring). When I worked out of Centralia in 1998-99 there were 10-turns in the pool, reduced to about 3 now. Man do I feel for anyone sucked into that morass!

You know, that's a problem on every railroad. They've let some corporate pencil pushing idiot decide what manpower needs are. I haven't talked to one of these people yet that has gotten it, but I have talked to one or two who are starting to catch on. Crew Management is too ingrained with battling the Unions, and its sad to say, some of the "off the street" guys are the only ones learning anything. I can't see any tax benefit to this, unless they are playing some game with training assistance, but then that limits your applicants. Who knows.

Without a doubt, it has to be a tax game.

When I received railroad pay checks, many of my fellow employees were expert economists and accountants, and they reliably reported that many management practices were done because of a "write off."

Since I heard it from railroad employees, it was the truth. Today, many of these same fellows probably serve on the national Federal Reserve Board. I am sure the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee has such folks appear as a matter of policy.

If BNSF gets their trackage rights on IC from St Louis to Memphis, which allows them to abandon the flood-prone ex-Frisco River Line (something thats been in the works for awhile now), then I'm sure the deal would open up the possibility to route the Scherer coal trains via Galesburg and Centrailia, and from there to Memphis via IC. This would create a fairly flat profile for the trains most of the way, eliminating the huge power consists east of KC which are required to run via Springfield MO. Who knows whats gonna happen, but a BNSF person did say here on TO earlier that BNSF was looking to find a way for these trains to get to Memphis using 1+1 power sets all the way from Alliance. Currently they can run 1+1 Alliance to Lincoln or KC, where they have to 'bulk up' to a 3+2 arrangement. They can't lowball UP on the price, and then use 3+2 to get coal to Memphis when UP needs 2+1 all the way. Where's the profit in that?

Sadly, no bnsf people from Centralia are aware of any alternate business, yet. Just what the maintenance stingy IC needs, more 20,000-ton behemoths to hammer the hell out of the r.o.w.! Of course maybe they can broker the same deal with the bnsf that they have with the UP. Any M/L derailments, (UP coal-trains) the UP foots the bill.

This is the first I have heard of any alternative business for this line also. I was told that Beardstown to Paducah would have no traffic. I was also told that plans were in the works to lease off the tracks and retain trackage rights if needed. If the company really was concerned with the use of power on the coal trains they could route the trains through St. Louis down the River sub now if they wanted. Its not like this line is at capacity. When I worked in K.C. I remember the trains coming in with 1 and 1 and then we added the extra power there for the K.C. to Palos AL and now the Georgia contract coming will do the same. Its sad that we seem to keep losing business instead of gaining. To hire in Centralia doesn't make sense. If they were going to reroute using the I.C. they would have to move the crews from Chafee Mo. So the manpower isn't an issue. Obviouly I must not see the big picture. I remember when I hired out I was furloughed after training. I was told 3 weeks into training my class shouldn't have been hired. 5 years later and now they have practically sold off my home terminal and 300 miles of road work is shortlined.

BN_ENGINEER Wrote:
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> When I worked in K.C. I remember the
> trains coming in with 1 and 1 and then we added
> the extra power there for the K.C. to Palos AL and
> now the Georgia contract coming will do the same.


In order to win the Georgia business from UP, they had to have a cost model which was lower than UP's 2+1 model. I don't understand how they can "do the same" power additions for the Georgia trains at KC as they do with the Palos trains today and still make any kind of profit doing so.

Sounds to me that BNSF won the contract based on a 1+1 cost structure and now has to come up with a 1+1 route after-the-fact if they want to keep the contract profitable. Thats not saying 5-unit trains over the Thayer is out of the question, but they won't make any money on it. The rather public announcement that no track capacity improvements would be made before the Georgia contract starts implies (to me, at least) that a final routing hasn't been selected yet.

If they do route the Georgia trains via IC, I would see them getting on IC at Centrailia, rather than running BNSF all the way to Paducah. Maybe use BNSF Paducah-Centralia for empties (directional running) until resulting BNSF-sponsored track improvements (new sidings, etc) to IC are complete.

If anything is holding the trackage rights deal up, its probably IC's fears that BNSF will try to do the same for any business it tries to wrestle away from the UP, or when UP goes after other BNSF business, the lower costs of the IC routing will be the "break glass in case of emergency" response from BNSF. A trickle of BNSF coal on the IC mainline just might become an uncontrollable flood as more coal contracts come due for renewal and UP is trying to win based on their 2+1 model. You gotta remember most 10-year coal contracts which are coming up for renewal now were originally written before the AC power/DPU craze, so the pricing formula used to write the old contracts was a bit higher because costs were higher back then, and the advent of AC power and longer trains by virtue of DPU was considered 'extra money in the bank'. Due to competition, new contract prices are no doubt lower, and they eat away at the savings which AC/DPU has produced.

I bet BNSF is missing their BNSF+CN merger right about now...

I forgot to mention that the BNSF is building a coal staging yard outside of Marion Ar. Also they have told the crews in Thayer this is going to mean lots of new work for them. I would like to see the coal trains routed through Beardstown - Centralia-Paducah. Once we lose the tracks it seems like we never would get them back. As for the track improvemnents on the IC. I didn't know the BN had anything going with them. The IC would be nice if it was double tracked from Chicago to New Orleans.