Western Railroad Discussion > Railex out UP taking over this coming June.

Hi Folks. I just wanted to ask if any one knows if UP will make any kind of Changes to the ex Railex trains once they take over full ops in June as they faze of the Railex works and they become part of the UP work force. Thanks for any replys foks and have a good weekend.

Just joking here, but knowing railroads' past history, they'll probably move from multiple trains a week to just one giant train a month! At least, I hope I'm joking, but that seems to be the way railroads run things now days. Cost control is all that seems to matter, not service to the customer. I feel this can't be good for service with UP taking full control.

I seem to recall that Railex uses a Ex UP SW10 , for switching, so the U.P. will get their old unit back.

They will probably suffer the same fate as the Express Lane service.

Unless there's a corporate champ high up in the exec tree, a small business inside a big company is out numbered.

Posted from Android

I saw massive eastbound at North Platte on Tue 4 units on head end plus 2 mid train CPUs including a CITX Bluebird.

Posted from Android

That wont happen due to what they ship as they ship quite a bit of fresh produce that's why train size varies depending on the season. The info comes from a supervisor I know who works at the WA facility near Pasco.
-------------------------------------------------------
> Just joking here, but knowing railroads' past
> history, they'll probably move from multiple
> trains a week to just one giant train a month! At
> least, I hope I'm joking, but that seems to be the
> way railroads run things now days. Cost control
> is all that seems to matter, not service to the
> customer. I feel this can't be good for service
> with UP taking full control.

EricSP Wrote:
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> They will probably suffer the same fate as the
> Express Lane service.

That's exactly what I think will happen. I think a more likely scenario is for, say, the train out of Wallula departs and goes through Hinkle, where it's filled out to 9000 feet of junk freight (probably just add the RailEx cars to the MHKNP train). It might operate the same as RailEx did for a little while, but railroad management can't help to screw things up in the name of saving a couple crew starts, so my bet this doesn't bode well for RailEx.

spwolfmtn Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> EricSP Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > They will probably suffer the same fate as the
> > Express Lane service.
>
> That's exactly what I think will happen. I think
> a more likely scenario is for, say, the train out
> of Wallula departs and goes through Hinkle, where
> it's filled out to 9000 feet of junk freight
> (probably just add the RailEx cars to the MHKNP
> train). It might operate the same as RailEx did
> for a little while, but railroad management can't
> help to screw things up in the name of saving a
> couple crew starts, so my bet this doesn't bode
> well for RailEx.

As much as I hate to think it, this is what is going to happen. I hope the UP doesn't screw this up with crew starts and fuel conservation which is all they seem to think about these days.

CS

spwolfmtn Wrote:
------------------------------------------------------- Cost control
> is all that seems to matter, not service to the
> customer. I feel this can't be good for service
> with UP taking full control.

Service to the share holders.

SantaFeRuss

Posted from Android

spwolfmtn Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Just joking here, but knowing railroads' past
> history, they'll probably move from multiple
> trains a week to just one giant train a month! At
> least, I hope I'm joking, but that seems to be the
> way railroads run things now days. Cost control
> is all that seems to matter, not service to the
> customer. I feel this can't be good for service
> with UP taking full control.

Here's a link to the discussion when the acquisition was first announced about 4 months ago:

http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,4194375

Off topic, but here's an interesting example, and a ray of hope for UP. When they started the ZG2OA (Global2, Illinois to Oakland, CA) service several years ago, they experimented by combining the service with ZG2LT (Lathrop, CA) where at Sparks, Nevada, ZG2OA would "jettison" the Sparks+Lathrop segment and take off on its own as a much shorter train, while Sparks Yard would set out the cars, then another crew + additional set of locomotives would take the rest of the train as ZSPLT (Sparks to Lathrop).

Eventually, UP settled on running the ZG2OA and ZG2LT as two separate trains and eliminating the ZSPLT, where ZG2OA would be responsible for carrying the Sparks setout. Seems they made a service-oriented decision there?

RailEx by itself might not be large enough to run a "loss leader" or "break even" service for market share, but if UP wants to, they have enough capital to do so with the RailEx business out of Delano, CA (Central Valley) where the refrigerated business has been suffering of late, with trains as small as 6 cars (witnessed by me last October) has been going east. It's up to them to figure out whether shipping discounts can bring back the steady 20+ car trains they had several years ago.

Either that or surrender to the short-sighted and ignorant "fiduciary duty" shareholders, who only care about funding retirement accounts about to get cashed out due to the aging Baby Boomers. In that case, the irrational penny-pinching and "reducing crew starts" will continue.

cchan006 Wrote:
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> RailEx by itself might not be large enough to run
> a "loss leader" or "break even" service for market
> share, but if UP wants to, they have enough
> capital to do so with the RailEx business out of
> Delano, CA (Central Valley) where the refrigerated
> business has been suffering of late, with trains
> as small as 6 cars (witnessed by me last October)
> has been going east. It's up to them to figure out
> whether shipping discounts can bring back the
> steady 20+ car trains they had several years ago.

SJVR still has many packing houses next to many of its lines. UP even has some. It would be nice if UP would actually be committed to service that would actually get them to ship by rail again. They did grow the perishables business quite a bit with the Express Lane service before they ruined it. If they were committed to hauling perishables they could have a daily train out of the Railex facility that could pick up reefers and canned goods boxcars at Fresno that could be 60 to 80 car during the summer (the QFRNPP was up to 50+ mechanical reefers and canned goods boxcars) within a couple of years, unless the shippers figure UP will pull the rug out from under them again and not ship on UP.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/30/17 00:51 by EricSP.

There needs to be some thinking "outside the box". The service out of Delano really needs to go via Tehachapi, Sunset and GSR to the midwest. Delano and Bakersfield are not far apart. It is taking too long for the perishables to get out of California going via Roseville and the truckers have exploited it. Routing via Tucson might work if UP could secure even just a bit of the perishable traffic from southern Arizona points. Trailers and containers can be loaded at the Port of Tucson to be added to the train.



Allen

As far as UP getting "serious" about the Railex business...I'll believe it when I see it! The downgrading of the "Express Lane" trains (QFRNPP) to "junk" train status back in 2005 was all I needed to see to show how serious UP was about that business. UP is going to have to work extra hard just to get the shippers to come back on board with the new service...heard that promise too many times before.

cchan006 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> spwolfmtn Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
(SNIP)
>
> Either that or surrender to the short-sighted and
> ignorant "fiduciary duty" shareholders, who only
> care about funding retirement accounts about to
> get cashed out due to the aging Baby Boomers. In
> that case, the irrational penny-pinching and
> "reducing crew starts" will continue.


Damn share owners! Who the hell do they think they are?

We got rid of passengers, we can get rid of share owners and fiduciary nonsense, too.

Posted from Android

bradleymckay Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There needs to be some thinking "outside the box".
> The service out of Delano really needs to go via
> Tehachapi, Sunset and GSR to the midwest. Delano
> and Bakersfield are not far apart. It is taking
> too long for the perishables to get out of
> California going via Roseville and the truckers
> have exploited it. Routing via Tucson might work
> if UP could secure even just a bit of the
> perishable traffic from southern Arizona points.
> Trailers and containers can be loaded at the Port
> of Tucson to be added to the train.
>
>
>
> Allen

That would require rerouting all of the traffic from the Valley the train picks up in Sparks. Or running a "sometimes 6 Car" train a long way.

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Damn share owners! Who the hell do they think they
> are?
>
> We got rid of passengers, we can get rid of share
> owners and fiduciary nonsense, too.
>
> Posted from Android

Sarcasm aside, one large tech company was fed up enough to spend considerable amount of money to go private... that happened about 4 years ago. BNSF essentially did that when Berkshire Hathaway bought them. Hope more good companies follow that route. Maybe businesses can focus better on running the business and servicing the customers, instead of catering to the longest-running fake news of them all, the financial media.

cchan006 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Lackawanna484 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Damn share owners! Who the hell do they think
> they
> > are?
> >
> > We got rid of passengers, we can get rid of
> share
> > owners and fiduciary nonsense, too.
> >
> > Posted from Android
>
> Sarcasm aside, one large tech company was fed up
> enough to spend considerable amount of money to go
> private... that happened about 4 years ago. BNSF
> essentially did that when Berkshire Hathaway
> bought them. Hope more good companies follow that
> route. Maybe businesses can focus better on
> running the business and servicing the customers,
> instead of catering to the longest-running fake
> news of them all, the financial media.

I agree with that overview. If companies want to go private, more power to them.

But if they want public market ownership, public oversight comes with that.

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> cchan006 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > spwolfmtn Wrote:
> >
> --------------------------------------------------
>
> > -----
> (SNIP)
> >
> > Either that or surrender to the short-sighted
> and
> > ignorant "fiduciary duty" shareholders, who
> only
> > care about funding retirement accounts about to
> > get cashed out due to the aging Baby Boomers.
> In
> > that case, the irrational penny-pinching and
> > "reducing crew starts" will continue.
>
>
> Damn share owners! Who the hell do they think they
> are?
>
> We got rid of passengers, we can get rid of share
> owners and fiduciary nonsense, too.
>
> Posted from Android

But if railroads want to grow their business and become less reliant on the low hanging fruit, like their dramatically reduced coal businesses, then they need to realize that they have to provide a reliable service to the customer that the customers want, otherwise, the customers will not be there, hence there will be no business and NO profits for wall street. Most businesses have already figured this out, but apparently, it takes a lot more than 100 plus years of railroading to figure this out in this industry...

Something that I'm curious to see if it happens, is if UP starts providing more days of service for it's RailEx business, and then goes back to running it's "fruit trains" again where they can add all their perishable traffic to daily perishable trains like they used to do (ie bring back hot QFRNPP and QHKNPP schedules)? That would seem very logical and cost effective, especially in light of it's reduced coal train traffic on it's main lines.