Western Railroad Discussion > Could "Open Access" stall a final round of Mergers Indefinitely?

I think it's virtually gauranteed that a final round of mergers among class 1 railroads would trigger Open Access reform in congress. Aside from the headaches such a reform would cause, railroads have a lot of thier profit tied to captive pricing, i.e. customers that have no viable alternative but to ship via one railroad and are priced at a higher rate than customers with abilities to ship by more than one railroad, or other methods of transportation. Railroad profit margins are now at a level comparable to the "Robber Barron" era when widespread public resentment formed that led to the formation of the Interstate Commerce Commission and a host of regulations to put the railroads in a virtual straight jacket. Little wonder then for the past few decades, any time service disruptions became problematic, shippers started grousing for Open Access. Most recently with the disruptions on the CSX due to EHH's Precision Schedule Railroading changes. I think those stakes explain the railroads collective resistance to such a round of mergers despite the concentrated effort of EHH in his final days at CP.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

---

Not to hijack the thread, but I'm of the opinion that railroads would have been alot better off if EHH would have chosen a different profession, or at least if PSR never would have kept on.

Posted from Android

Open Access could turn out to look a lot different than some folks expect.

For example, there is a change in federal tax policy which could greatly benefit current owners.

For many years income tax law distinguished between active and passive operation in how a company was set up. Rail companies are active.

Real estate trusts and energy trusts used the law to shield passive income, so share or unit owners benefited. The IRS and courts extended that to certain refineries and pipelines. The catch is they need to get a high % of their business from unrelated companies.

If UP etc decided to accept UPS, Schneider Covenant and Bourassa, etc traffic with their own rail qualified train drivers, the game could change rapidly. UP would maintain track and dispatch. Like the NJ Turnpike.

I'm not saying it will happen, but it would be on my watch list if I was rail labor. Or an investor.

The practical difference is income is only taxed at the individual level, not at the corporate plus the individual levels.

Posted from Android

I disagree.  No mergers will be allowed by the feds.  Remember EHH asking for a "friendly" advance picture of a proposed merger.  They flat put a hammer to request which caused him to back off.

On reason any merger would happen is if one railroad was failing and then it would be broken up in pieces for the remaining class ones.

Open access:  I would bet that shippers would love to see it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/18 07:12 by tomstp.

Rail service is gouge rates for crap service. I know people who work at rail shippers. The RR chaos reality on the shipper end is far more destructive and toxic than railfans and even most rails understand. Abandonments are no good as it denies access to good accounts. UP people here in Omaha repeatedly vented to me how viable and lucrative traffic connecting to other RR's was choked away by bad service and eventually abandonments.

I see that even UP purchased land near Albany, NY near CSX  for a reefer unloading facility. UP-CSX friction has been well known for a while.

I don't have the time to list other examples. Mergers, in general, have run their course, if there are any benefits to begin with.

tomstp Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I disagree.  No mergers will be allowed by the
> feds.  Remember EHH asking for a "friendly"
> advance picture of a proposed merger.  They flat
> put a hammer to request which caused him to back
> off.
>
> On reason any merger would happen is if one
> railroad was failing and then it would be broken
> up in pieces for the remaining class ones.
>
> Open access:  I would bet that shippers would
> love to see it.

brc600 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Rail service is gouge rates for crap service. I
> know people who work at rail shippers. The RR
> chaos reality on the shipper end is far more
> destructive and toxic than railfans and even most
> rails understand. Abandonments are no good as it
> denies access to good accounts. UP people here in
> Omaha repeatedly vented to me how viable and
> lucrative traffic connecting to other RR's was
> choked away by bad service and eventually
> abandonments.

In this thread https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?1,4668835 Date: 11/12/18 14:33 PSR: can Amtrak be Precision Scheduled? Author: railstiesballast
toward the (current) end, the conversation turned toward infrastructure utilization and the cost of chaos (not even instigated by me!)

Date: 11/13/18 18:40 Re: PSR: can Amtrak be Precision Scheduled? Author: Bandito:
It is my position that the fixation on variable costs is the result of fundamentally flawed costing which ignores the cost of capital employed in the fixed plant. By ignoring the cost of capital, the costing methods employed understate the cost of the long-life deteriorating assets that are a railroad's major investment, while simultaneously overstating the importance of the more variable costs (esp. crews). The result is the vastly underutilized rail infrastructure that we have seen for decades.

Date: 11/13/18 19:05 Re: PSR: can Amtrak be Precision Scheduled? Author: Lackawanna484:
I'm intrigued by the simultaneous focus on minimizing crew rests to turn crews quickly; and the use of close to minimum wage crew van drivers.  Lost drivers wandering around in search of ill defined pick up points, etc are a staple of rail experience.  But, actually putting real muscle behind the pick up process would produce considerably quicker pickups, delivery to crew rest, and faster returns to service.

US railroads are good at making the maximum amount of money for the minimum amount of effort. They have generally forgotten how to do anything else. Even Red Hot Smokin' Awesome Z (RHSAZ) trains operate after enough traffic has been accumulated to make a train "worthwhile."That leaves lots of traffic on roads that really should be on railroads. For example facility in the Kent Valley south of Seattle has two trailers loaded for the east at closing time, One goes to South Seattle for a BN RHSAZ train. The other is an owner/operator who hooks up and heads to I-90. That driver has left Spokane long behind before the RHSAZ pulls at South Seattle. When I was working on the Washington State passenger service (what became the Cascades service), part of which I did working for BN and part of which I did working for Washington State or Amtrak, I was also working on freight service problems. The state was interested in running short haul intermodal between Blaine and Portland to relieve I-5 congestion. The one and only suggestion that BN had was to build a huge intermodal terminal at Blaine and run a train every night to Portland and back.It is somewhere around six hours by truck. Who exactly is going to leave a truck sit in Blaine (or Portland) for half a day or so in order to avoid a six hour trip? Nobody. That was the result of the "study" and the project died. That was about a decade after BN tried to implement simiilar service between Portland and Seattle (at a schedule average speed of 19 mph) with predictable results.

I am unabashedly in favor of open access, but not the open access that the railroad industry fears. They have a huge investment in infrastructure (that they don't use it well is another story). They need to be compensated for the infrastructure. However, the infrastructure needs to be better utilized for the benefit of society in general. Lots of things that are moving on trucks (Commercial trucks do 99 percent of the damage to highways and contribute 35 percent of the cost of maintenance and repair) that should have a substantially rail component in the movement of the goods.

Last year, I did some work for a Washington State senator. I was asked to attend a meeting of Pacific Northwest Economic Region http://www.pnwer.org/ an organization of economic high-level movers and shakers. There was a day of sessions on transportation in the region. After that, I was asked to join several transportation committee members at a meeting of All Aboard Washington http://allaboardwashington.org/ where the entire day was spent discussing passenger service in central/eastern WA. After that,I was asked to accompany to a jobs/economic summit in Moses Lake https://www.awb.org/about/ . That was 12 hours of economic problems and related transportation problems. After that, I was asked if I could figure out a way to satisfy the folks in the three groups. I developed: https://tinyurl.com/Central-WA-1.

(Sorry 'bout that. Trainorders just doesn't like the URL. After several attempts to work around it, Im left with - it's copy and paste time.)

Sure, it's radical, but there was about 18 hours of complaints about rail service and desire for rail service, just in three organizations in Washington.

This needs a lot of detail work yet, but this is the basic concept. Instead of open access with shippers running trains at below cost, railroads should be able to maintain existing business and attract a lot more, even if the additional traffic is handled by other companies.

TAW



 



Edited 7 time(s). Last edit at 11/15/18 10:24 by TAW.

> Date: 11/13/18 19:05 Re: PSR: can Amtrak be
> Precision Scheduled? Author: Lackawanna484:
> I'm intrigued by the simultaneous focus on
> minimizing crew rests to turn crews quickly; and
> the use of close to minimum wage crew van
> drivers.  Lost drivers wandering around in search
> of ill defined pick up points, etc are a staple of
> rail experience.  But, actually putting real
> muscle behind the pick up process would produce
> considerably quicker pickups, delivery to crew
> rest, and faster returns to service.

It is interesting to note that when the railroads had their clerks doing the work of today's van drivers, they were much more aggressive to try to make sure crews were not stranded at all points of its territory waiting for rides.  This was probably due to the fact that clerks were paid fairly well, so it costed the railroads a good deal of money to have a bunch of clerk/crew van drivers around to make the numerous trips that they make now days.  However, fast forward to the current time, where van drivers are contracted out and barely make minimum wage, and the railroads just takes the lowest contract bid when signing these contracts, the railroads now (as just one example) push the limits of a crews' hours of service, then where ever they die, we'll send a ride out for them eventually.

Same goes for getting trains into and out of the yards.  Before "trip rates", crews would get paid for excessive delays in leaving a terminal or in arriving at a terminal.  Railroads watched this very closely, and there was trouble with terminal management when these claims were getting paid out.  Now that these claims are gone, the discipline from the railroad in getting trains crews out of the yards and on their way, or getting them in, tied up, so they can be rested for their next outbound run, is gone.  So now there is no discipline in management to get trains on their way asap after they're called, or tied up in the yard so they can get rested and get back on the board again.

Clearly, the money that was paid out for these things had a purpose, they kept railroad managements' feet to the fire to do their jobs appropriately.

Bingo!

Posted from Android

spwolfmtn Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> Clearly, the money that was paid out for these
> things had a purpose, they kept railroad
> managements' feet to the fire to do their jobs
> appropriately.

I have maintained for decades that the mega-mergers presented the opportunity to make a lot of money with little effort, little skill, and little attention to detail. The Class 1 railroads extant in the 60s and before couldn't have survived as long as they did (under oppressive ICC regulation and government-subsidized competition) were they managed the way that the Class 1 railroads are now. When struggling to maintain, every dollar is considered. I've worked in places that had the cost of stopping, yellow blocks, crossing over, heading in, etc. (e.g., fuel and brake shoes) available at the dispatcher tables for their use. I've already mentioned deadhead cost, held away cost, hours of service cost. Railroads now are so big that these things are considered inconsequential.
(and folks wonder about the railroads consolidating to become bigger yet?)

TAW

TAW Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> US railroads are good at making the maximum amount
> of money for the minimum amount of effort. They
> have generally forgotten how to do anything else.

That is so much the truth now days at the Class One railroads!  It's amazing the minimal amounts of effort that railroads' managements will do for customers and to try to get new business.  Rarely do I see local management get involved with local customers over service issues, and even much, much more rarely (if ever) have I heard of them out trying to get new business.  It's clearly "not in my pay grade".

> Even Red Hot Smokin' Awesome Z (RHSAZ) trains
> operate after enough traffic has been accumulated
> to make a train "worthwhile."That leaves lots of
> traffic on roads that really should be on
> railroads. For example facility in the Kent Valley
> south of Seattle has two trailers loaded for the
> east at closing time, One goes to South Seattle
> for a BN RHSAZ train. The other is an
> owner/operator who hooks up and heads to I-90.
> That driver has left Spokane long behind before
> the RHSAZ pulls at South Seattle.

However, I'd also like to point out that often it's the price, and RELIABLE, CONSISTENT service, that will win a customer's business; so one does not often need to be the "fastest".  Often times, even with what has been talked about above in this thread as the railroad rates being like those of the "robber baron days", they are usually cheaper than trucking.  In many cases, if the railroad would offer (and deliver) a cheaper rate for a customer (based on trucking competition for example), and reliable and consistent service, they would get a lot more business, even if it wasn't the fastest service.  However, and especially under Hunter Harrison's PSR scheme for example, now just making a decent profit from their customers isn't good enough for railroad companies, they now must make a "great" profit from them, or they're not worth serving.  Hunter was known for telling customers to "get lost" when their rates didn't meet his profit margins.  If there is anything about Hunter Harrison, he serves as a great example of human greed.


> Lots of things that are moving on
> trucks (Commercial trucks do 99 percent of the
> damage to highways and contribute 35 percent of
> the cost of maintenance and repair) that should
> have a substantially rail component in the
> movement of the goods.

That is so much the truth, yet we still subsidize a trucking and barge industry.  They should be required to pay their fair share for their use (and maintenance) of public assets in the performance of their business, even if, as they claim "higher transportation costs would be passed on to the customer".  As many find out, it isn't always that easy to just "pass on the cost increases".

It also bothers me the public money railroads have taken from the government for infrastructure improvements, at least in some cases.  Some I feel are justified (to a point), like what BNSF got from the State of Washington for improvements to run commuter trains, but others are clearly an example of corporate welfare and/or hand outs (for example, NS and CSX tunnel and clearance projects on the east coast).  These do nothing but increase the efficiencies (and profits) of those companies, with very little benefit to the public in general.  However, what really bothers me the most, is what happened in CSX's case as an example; and apparently, it's A'OK to do this.  They got a bunch of public money for their clearance project on the former B&O, saying "this will remove trucks from the highways" and "benefit the public.  However then, the god of railroad corporate greed, Hunter Harrison takes over, and he implements his  plan of only handling business that makes the most profit; clearly, no public benefit here.  In the beginning, I had hope.  CSX got all this money and completed their projects, then started to implement expansion of service to haul intermodal in shorter traffic lanes and more terminals, all ideas that would actually remove some truck traffic from the highways (as stated in their propaganda) and provide a benefit for the public.  But then EHH, and his servants, have turned this around and now it's back to focus on only long haul business that makes the most profit.  CSX should be forced to pay back the money it received for their projects, as clearly, the current management is only interested in their profits, not in getting competitive with trucks to get them off the crowded highways.  At least so far, it sounds like NS is still trying to make the shorter haul intermodal work, I sincerely hope they do as they got a lot of public money for their asset enhancements as well.  I would be all for public/private projects like this if there was some stipulation on how the railroad would fulfill their part of the bargain, and then be forced to do so.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/16/18 11:06 by spwolfmtn.

There's a post over on the Nostalgia & History section on Australian Cane Railways. They run on 2 foot gauge track on a 300 km system
to a mill that can only process a specific tonnage per hour of a crop (sugar cane) that deteriorates rapidly after being cut so process time
is incredibly sensitive and some how (GPS, internal computer system) they pull that off, truly PSR. Oh I'm sorry, I got distracted, it's a
shipper owned railroad with shipper equipment to a shipper plant ie somebody gives a damn!!

Out

TAW Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

>
> I am unabashedly in favor of open access, but not
> the open access that the railroad industry fears.
> They have a huge investment in infrastructure
> (that they don't use it well is another story).
> They need to be compensated for the
> infrastructure. However, the infrastructure needs
> to be better utilized for the benefit of society
> in general. Lots of things that are moving on
> trucks (Commercial trucks do 99 percent of the
> damage to highways and contribute 35 percent of
> the cost of maintenance and repair) that should
> have a substantially rail component in the
> movement of the goods.
>

>
> This needs a lot of detail work yet, but this is
> the basic concept. Instead of open access with
> shippers running trains at below cost, railroads
> should be able to maintain existing business and
> attract a lot more, even if the additional traffic
> is handled by other companies.
>
> TAW
>

TAW, I think that Open Access could serve to address the costing issues I mentioned. With the railroad (or infrastructure owner) no longer operating the trains, they'd no longer be fixating on the variable costs of operation--they'd naturally start paying more attention to the high capital costs of the underutilized plant. Their interests would be in maximizing the volume of cargo being handled. Heck, they might even put caps on allowed train lengths to maintain fluidity of the system. While the train operators might still want to try to economize on crews and train starts, that could be offset by proper pricing of access to the linehaul. Also, if the train operators ran their own terminals, they'd have more of an incentive to run trains at lengths their terminals can actually handle without gumming up the mainlines.

But even just having open access of broadly defined terminal areas (while the railroads continue to operate the trains on their own lines) could be a help in some locations. One example would be Toledo, especially the CSX yard just south of the city. The Parkes National Logistics Center in Australia would serve as a good model for a broader open access Toledo "terminal." Note the terminals of competing train operators Pacific National and SCT Logistics on opposite sides of one the tracks in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K155c8GFI4k

Open access would not benefit passenger and commuter operators who would pay market rates for priority service.

Posted from Android

stash Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Open access would not benefit passenger and
> commuter operators who would pay market rates for
> priority service.
>

Not necessarily. there would be more to the rate than priority.

The Open Access scheme would require that the infrastructure business be separate from the train operation business. Trains could be operated by the infrastructure owner, but on a non-discriminatory basis with an established rate that is based on cost of ownership, cost of maintenance, and profit.

For example, with a figure I have at hand, one axle of a 22 tons per axle passenger train moving at 110 mph has the same effect on the track as one axle of a 37 per axle freight train moving at 35 mph. However, the freight train has a lot more axles. Thus, a 120 car bulk train at 35 mph has the effect on the track of 12 10-car passenger trains.

Under current conditions, passenger trains provide fuel, equipment, terminals, equipment maintenance, and administration (AMTK pays class 1 railroads for management positions. Commuter service contracts vary, but I expect that they likewise pay for management positions). Freight customers provide none of that. Under an open access scheme, all of that would be transparent because operation accounting would need to be separate from infrastructure accounting. A couple of decades ago, the industry hired Zeta Tech to prove that passenger trains do not pay enough. The result was quietly buried because (guess).

The other major factor would be that Plenty Of Green operation would go away. All traffic would be operated on schedules. In Germany (the system with which I'm most familiar), a train may be run on notice of about three hours. The request is made, a schedule for the movement is developed, and the train is expected to operate on that schedule. That's pretty much the way US operation worked until the 80s (German rails learned about that kind of operation from US rails during and after WWII).

Of course, that means that US railroads would need to be a lot better at operation than they are now, which is why the Washington program I referenced includes developing a full railroad program at one of the Washington universities (similar to the two dozen or so found in Europe and Asia) and a full railroad operation trade school involving state-owned short lines.

TAW

Bandito Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> While the train operators might
> still want to try to economize on crews and train
> starts, that could be offset by proper pricing of
> access to the linehaul.

Right. The price for a train that doesn't fit the infrastructure would be substantial. As well, under the various European schemes (I spent some time there in April studying their Open Access structure), an operator must pay for delays their trains cause to other trains and the infrastructure manager must pay for delays that the infrastructure causes to trains (track maintenance, track condition, signal failure, bad train movement decisions, etc.). Rail infrastructure utilization cannot be maximized without careful organization and discipline.

> Also, if the train
> operators ran their own terminals, they'd have
> more of an incentive to run trains at lengths
> their terminals can actually handle without
> gumming up the mainlines.

Right. As well as above, trains doubling, tripling, etc. out and in would pay for more main track occupancy as would trains holding out.


>
> But even just having open access of broadly
> defined terminal areas (while the railroads
> continue to operate the trains on their own lines)
> could be a help in some locations. One example
> would be Toledo, especially the CSX yard just
> south of the city. The Parkes National Logistics
> Center in Australia would serve as a good model
> for a broader open access Toledo "terminal." Note
> the terminals of competing train operators Pacific
> National and SCT Logistics on opposite sides of
> one the tracks in this video:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K155c8GFI4k

Right. Consolidated terminals could be owned by the infrastructure manager in the same manner. Consolidated yards could be operated by separate terminal companies handling traffic for line haul operating companies in the manner of BRC, IHB, or B&OCT. When Mexico privatized, they set up the Mexico City terminal railroad (TFVM) to manage the yard and industry infrastructure of the Mexico City terminal and the main tracks in the terminal. Alternatively, each train operator may have its own yard as in the Australian example. That would likewise work like Chicago before the 70s. Some railroads had minimal yard facilities and let one of the three terminal railroads do the work. Others had extensive yards and only needed the terminal companies for interchange delivery or pickup with carriers using the terminal railroad for their switching.

In the 60s, BRC looked like open access, although the trains belonged to the owners. IHB had foreign traffic (BRC and Soo Line) using IHB without using IHB yards, and B&OCT provided several railroads with routes between non-B&OCT locations (Soo Line Forest Park to the CJ, NKP, WAB, sometimes CRIP) to and from CJ and CPT, and some movements handled as detours rather than trackage rights, for example, Erie to and from CNW Western Ave and IHB between Calumet Park and Blue Island Jct. It did indeed take discipline to make it all work, but it did work well.

TAW

This won’t happen for a least two reasons.
     1. A shipper can contract out their physical distribution function to a third party such as UPS.  Rest assured UPS will not be viewed as a small “captive” shipper.
      2. Intercity rail freight transportation by so called “captive” shippers is too small for Congress to take any interest.  Lobbying groups have been proposing open access for almost twenty years and they have nothing to show for their efforts.  Congresspeople have bigger fish to fry.

funnelfan Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I think it's virtually gauranteed that a final
> round of mergers among class 1 railroads would
> trigger Open Access reform in congress. Aside from
> the headaches such a reform would cause, railroads
> have a lot of thier profit tied to captive
> pricing, i.e. customers that have no viable
> alternative but to ship via one railroad and are
> priced at a higher rate than customers with
> abilities to ship by more than one railroad, or
> other methods of transportation. Railroad profit
> margins are now at a level comparable to the
> "Robber Barron" era when widespread public
> resentment formed that led to the formation of the
> Interstate Commerce Commission and a host of
> regulations to put the railroads in a virtual
> straight jacket. Little wonder then for the past
> few decades, any time service disruptions became
> problematic, shippers started grousing for Open
> Access. Most recently with the disruptions on the
> CSX due to EHH's Precision Schedule Railroading
> changes. I think those stakes explain the
> railroads collective resistance to such a round of
> mergers despite the concentrated effort of EHH in
> his final days at CP.

Bob Wilcox
Charlottesville, VA
My Flickr Shots

rantoul Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> ....The Open Access scheme would require that the
> infrastructure business be separate from the train
> operation business. ...
>
> Isn't this the railroad business model in Great
> Britain?

It is. Also in Germany, Switzerland, Austria.... There is a right way and a wrong way to do it. Great Britain was not the right way.

TAW

TAW Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I have maintained for decades that the
> mega-mergers presented the opportunity to make a
> lot of money with little effort, little skill, and
> little attention to detail. The Class 1 railroads
> extant in the 60s and before couldn't have
> survived as long as they did (under oppressive ICC
> regulation and government-subsidized competition)
> were they managed the way that the Class 1
> railroads are now. When struggling to maintain,
> every dollar is considered. I've worked in places
> that had the cost of stopping, yellow blocks,
> crossing over, heading in, etc. (e.g., fuel and
> brake shoes) available at the dispatcher tables
> for their use. I've already mentioned deadhead
> cost, held away cost, hours of service cost.
> Railroads now are so big that these things are
> considered inconsequential.
> (and folks wonder about the railroads
> consolidating to become bigger yet?)

Bingo, for you too!  Today's mega-systems are too big to manage.  Us, much older people, saw many good examples of this from smaller railroads.  Having grown up around the DRGW, I was witness many times to their "Action Road" slogan.  With them, cars did not sit in the yards and trains did not sit on the main lines.  True, they didn't have a huge traffic volume on their lines, but the philosophy they used worked.  But for them, to offer good, reliable service was an absolute necessity.  Today's mega systems, at least in recent history, this has not been the case.  They got enough cost savings from their mergers, and had enough big money customers (for example, coal, international intermodal, etc) to keep their piggy banks fat and happy.  Obviously, the thing that saved many railroads in the time of heavy regulation and radical changes in industry in the country, wasn't important any more.

It's not rocket science!  If a railroads' cars sit in yards waiting for trains to "fill out" so that all the trains are maxed out, those cars take up valuable yard space.  Seriously, I don't know how many times I will handle the same, loaded cars, in the yard - day after day, until they finally get on their way to their destinations.  "Oh, todays train that's scheduled to pick them up is too big".  The next day, "today's train only can take portion of the cars, the pick up now much bigger because of multiple days of cars accumulating".  The third day, "the train is too big again, so "roll the cars over to the next day"".  Finally, after some days of accumulating, there's enough cars to run and entire train from my terminal.  Some cars have been here for 3-4 days, most have been here for at least a couple of days.  Often times, there are loaded perishable cars in this mix; and sometimes, they run out of fuel!  How does anyone expect a customer to put up with this kind of extremely poor service, all so the railroad can maximize their train sizes.  Who in the corporate accounting department actually adds in all the costs that operations like this incur?

Case in point; the costs that are most likely not being included in their operations calculations.  The variable costs of switch engines like mine moving these cars from one track to another, to another, because we accumulate too many cars for the track that's holding the cars for those trains; so I have to keep moving them to longer tracks (or use up more tracks if I do not have a track long enough).  Added labor time and fuel used in always making more room in these tracks (gathering them) so I can put more cars in there.  Precious yard lead time used up switching these cars over and over again, just to name a few.  Fixed costs:  holding on to all these cars take up valuable yard track space.  In addition, and this one I really laugh at, is how many times do railroads' use the excuse of not purchasing rail cars because they don't get an adequate return on their investment?!?!  Yet these cars spend days, upon days, upon days sitting in yards waiting to get moved.  Railroads' always complain about "Velocity", yet most failures here are self inflicted!  Move the damn cars to their destinations and it's almost a "miracle", better return on your investments!  I sincerely bet none of these costs are figured in the railroad's calculation of the cost savings of running huge, mega trains that are scheduled for maximum use.  As most anyone knows, the number of cars for a particular train, on a particular day, varies greatly, yet they always try to maximize their utilization with little room for variables.

Again, it's not rocket science.  UPS does this very efficiently with packages, and yet for the most part, they keep their customers satisfied.  Carload railroading is much the same thing, just on a much larger scale.

spwolfmtn Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>  Seriously, I don't know
> how many times I will handle the same, loaded
> cars, in the yard - day after day, until they
> finally get on their way to their destinations. 
> "Oh, todays train that's scheduled to pick them up
> is too big".  The next day, "today's train only
> can take portion of the cars, the pick up now much
> bigger because of multiple days of cars
> accumulating".  The third day, "the train is too
> big again, so "roll the cars over to the next
> day"".  Finally, after some days of accumulating,
> there's enough cars to run and entire train from
> my terminal.  Some cars have been here for 3-4
> days, most have been here for at least a couple of
> days. 

You are describing the industry desperately trying to get out of the carload business while trying to hang on to their Common Carrier status. Make the service bad enough to make the customers go away. All that is left then is customers that can't go away (bulk commodities and other trainload customers) - relatively easy money.

TAW

Railroads don't seem to have way to account for the fallout costs for stalled trains, bad dispatching and a host of other self-inflicted incidents that happen on a regular basis on the railroad. If they did, they could justify the capital needed for infastructure or assets to solve those incidents.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR