Canadian Railroads > CN's safety record: don't blame EHH

Reuters has an article about the steep increase in the number of derailments on CN.  After several years of steady improvements, the company has seen a sharp increase in accidents.

>Trains operated by CN in Canada derailed along main lines 57 times in 2014, up 73 percent from 33 in
2013 and well above a 2009-2013 average of 39 accidents per year. On
CN's full 21,000 mile (33,800 km) network, which also includes the
Midwestern and southern United States, freight carloads rose 8 percent
last year. At least 27 of the domestic derailments were caused by track problems, up from a
previous annual average of 14. Data for smaller rival Canadian Pacific
Railway showed no similar pattern.<


http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/23/us-canada-derailments-exclusive-idUSKBN0MJ0AZ20150323

I beg to disagree! EHH IS responsible for the problems at CN, just like its starting to manifest itself at CP.

You can't run the hell out of your car and expect it to go on forever. MOW takes years to overcome neglect, the railway chief at CN and some outsiders have said as much.

You look at the lines of CSX and NS and then CN & CP , even an non-rail expert can see the difference!  

Mike Bannon
St Catharines, ON

But, is EHH also responsible for the several years of declines in derailments after he left? That would seem to be a plus.

CN had steadily improving operations after he left, based on the numbers.  If his successors didn't change the oil, continue to improve the right of way, etc why blame EHH?

Why do you people insist on backing him up? After years and years of neglect, it's going to take twice as long to recover from his famous "cost cutting". 

right on CNCP guy!

Mike Bannon
St Catharines, ON

A CN update:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/24/canada-derailments-cn-idUSL2N0WQ1U720150324

Some people like this individual obviously have nothing better to do than throw mud based on something they read about a person. This is easy to do considering they have never met the man in person and  really don't know anything about him.  Their to dumb to realize that there are all kinds of reasons for derailments ,weather,instant metallurgical failure which can just happen and the list goes on. But oh no EHH used to run CN so it must be his fault. He's been gone several years . The lack of mentality in some people is amazing.

As usual Bayview boy-totally consistant!!!

Mike Bannon
St Catharines, ON

The Teamsters Union representing some CN workers is on the record blaming CN management for running oil trains which are too long, too heavy, and too fast. There's a quote in the Globe & Mail on that point.


There are a number of reports that CN has delayed fixing known problems.  TSB mentioned that. One farmer neighbor reports :
>>New Brunswick farmer Paul-Emile Soucy, who experienced CN’s troubles first-hand, faults inadequate maintenance.On Jan. 26, 2014, a CN train derailed crossing his 230-year-old family
farm. He said CN workers had marked railroad ties that needed to be
replaced months before the accident, but they were replaced only after
the derailment.“They knew that the ties were bad and rotten and had to be replaced, but they didn’t do anything about it,” said Soucy.
Data obtained by Reuters indicates that a broken rail caused the
derailment.But CN rejected Soucy’s criticism, saying it spent C$41 million on basic maintenance in the area between 2012 and 2014.<<


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/cn-rail-derailment-numbers-soared-before-recent-crashes/article23576518/


Does anyone know if there are special rules for track inspections / Sperry analysis etc on lines which carry many oil trains?

>>New Brunswick farmer Paul-Emile Soucy, who experienced CN’s troubles first-hand, faults inadequate maintenance.On Jan. 26, 2014, a CN train derailed crossing his 230-year-old family 
farm. He said CN workers had marked railroad ties that needed to be 
replaced months before the accident, but they were replaced only after 
the derailment.“
This reminds me of my dad, who asked me once to call the railroad to stop the train (since he knows I work for the railroad and have the number, apparently) because he saw a spike sticking up out of a tie plate near the crossing.  This is also what happens when a HUGE corporation with HUGE budgets and HUGE complex organizational issues has to repair things.  I don't think anyone will ever see a 10-mile section gang with the manpower and effort to have knife-edge ballast and "Smooth as glass" track.  Those days are over.  What we have now is an stressed manpower situation where even with all the hiring we have had at all the railroads, it's still not worth it to people to stick around anymore with berating managers yelling about things they don't understand, with edicts from on high that make no sense to use in the real world.
I Love trains.  Even my wife jokes that I was married to the railroad before her.  But this place is not somewhere for anyone with 1/2 a brain to work at now.  They've dumbed it down to just another menial labor job.  

And as for the track problems, Sure, those trains are heavy, but I'm also thinking a 10,000foot stack train does the same amount of damage as an oil train. ..but Specifically with three derailments on the Ruel Sub, two of those it was VERY cold, and in the third one there was a pretty significant temperature change.  All of those things point to rail breaks...which are a cost of doing business with steel rails.  So, all of the talk of deferred maintenance and "is it or Isn't it EHH's fault" is moot--unless EHH is a metallurgist. The rail's just have trouble with temperature extremes and changes.  Sometimes you get lucky and the break happens before the train, or where it's not going to cause derailments, other times, you get fireballs.  

Guys, look, I"m not defending EHH, I'm staunchly in the "dislike" column. I think his version of "cutting to profitability" that he learned and mastered in the 70's and 80's worked in those times, but This is NOT the way to have long term success in this industry now.  Quite simply, his ideas that you sell everything you don't need and some of what you do needs to be put out to pasture.  I shudder to think how long he can continue to wow  Wall and Bay streets with this style of operation..It's death by 1,000 papercuts, eventually you cut until you're mortally wounded.

Now, as far as the track itself.  Deferred maintenance takes YEARS to fix.  Look at how long it took the northeast US to recover from PRR and (to a lesser extent)NYC's deferred maintenance in the 60's  It took a decade where nationalizing the US rail system was seriously discussed before a quasi-governmental operation called Conrail and the Staggers act was passed (out of desperation)started picking up the pieces, and after that decade it took them till the mid 80's to pare down and improve the physical plant to allow us to even think about enjoying the rail renaissance we have today.
And don't look to how CSX where I work as a shining example of fixing track...we're deferring maintenance here too.only 1 tie in 3 gets replaced, and to install 10 miles of new ties, the system gave the local MW crews one tamper and one regulator.  "We've done so much with so little, that I can now do nothing with everything!" the foreman said to me the other day.

I've railfanned CN in various locations for years.  They used to have some pretty solid looking track, better than other railroads.  Then starting under EHH era, track started to look worse and worse.  I mean mudholes, missing spikes, grass all over the roadbed, beat looking rail, etc. etc., and I'm talking mainlines in places like Ontario, Saskatchewan, etc. 

For sure, all of this is just railfan observation from trackside, and not all of it means things are falling apart.  But it's pretty obvious which way track is supposed to generally look if it is being maintained, and overall that has vanished from many locations on the CN.  So blame EHH or whoever at CN, but they have been obviously been cutting on track upkeep for years now  and that is something that is going to come around and bite you in the rear end eventually.  Things work fine for a while, but not forever, regular MofW is needed by every railroad and it will take CN years to dig out of the mess they have been put into.

In most companies, you prioritize what you need to do with the resources you have to do them.

You have 200 miles of slow orders, and you have money to fix 60 miles, so you have to pick. And, at the end of the day, 140 miles won't be touched. But, at some point, you have to say "are we going to increase the dividend this year, or will we pay the same dividend and fix another 500 miles of slow orders?"  That's part of what managing is about. You have to select among good projects and some won't be touched this year unless you move money from another bucket.

I suspect Reuters will push to find out exactly what happened with Mr Soucy's derailment. What did the track inspector's report say? Who read it, and made the decision to put off fixing the track, possibly for years? Who made the decision to rush a fix after the derailment? 

The government and the TSB has the obligation to ask / probe whether the railroads have the decision making capability to look out for employee and public safety. After the string of derailments, the Lac-Megantic fireball, etc a good case can be made that investment in the right of way, rested and well trained people, and accountability is not high on the list for Canada's railroads.

More controversially, I'd argue that a low operating rate flows from a safe and well maintained railroad. Not from a cut to the bone, don't have funds to buy anything environment.

Transport Canada is requesting a safety plan from CN Rail

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/25/canada-derailments-idUSL2N0WR0RJ20150325

bayview_boy Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Some people like this individual obviously have
> nothing better to do than throw mud based on
> something they read about a person. This is easy
> to do considering they have never met the man in
> person and  really don't know anything about him.
>  Their to dumb to realize that there are all
> kinds of reasons for derailments ,weather,instant
> metallurgical failure which can just happen and
> the list goes on. But oh no EHH used to run CN so
> it must be his fault. He's been gone several years
> . The lack of mentality in some people is amazing.


Give your head a shake. Another keyboard hero calling people dumb. I have experienced the changes over the years first hand. So don't try and tell me I am too dumb to realize their are other causes. The discussion was about hunter, not known causes of derailments. When hunter came over to cn, his well known comment on the infrastructure of canadian railroads was that they were "made of gold", meaning in great shape. So of course less money was put into maintenance. So that"gold" deteriorated. Flash ahead to post hunter. CN puts x amount of dollars into the the infrastructure, but with years of deferred maintenance, you never really "catch up" without putting more money into it. That's what hunter does, strips it to the bare bones, getting the operating ratio down, and driving the stock price up, laughing all the way to the bank when he leaves. Ask anyone who currently works at cp now. We are struggling at cn now with lack of equipment and man power in all departments because of this, many years later. 

Keep reading your news articles and pretending you know what is going on. We all know the media only puts out the truth right? But go ahead keep insulting people, since it's easy because you've never met us and really don't know anything about us. 

CPCNGuy, you summarize the situation so simply and perfectly.  And for sure, the snowball has just started it's long downhill roll at the CP......

No, I'm not a maintenance of way professional, but for someone who has seen the CN trackage for the past couple of decades, I'd say there is a big difference now.  Most of my visits into BC were when CN was still a Crown Corporation (ie owned by the federal government) and CN's main lines were incredibly "beefy".  They were one of the first with concrete ties, they had heavy ballast and rail, and a very solid looking roadbed; obviously highly maintained.

However, after CN was privatized, that image very slowly started to change.  It started under Tellier, as they even at the time said that CN was over maintained.  I'd say there was probably some validity to this as it sure seemed like the CN had an immaculate property, facilities, and trackage.  Their yards were huge and seemed like fortresses with huge modern shops - classic government property.  Many thought it was amazing the turnaround at CN and how it got to such enviable operating ratios, but when one inherits such an immaculate property, it was easy to cut back, reduce assets, and drive up profits (no doubt CN was not exactly an efficient operation under the government either).  Unfortunately, E. Hunter Harrison followed Tellier and greatly expanded the cost cutting and really seemed to drive it into a state of deferred maintenance.  Now a days, the CN main lines really show it with the trackage often looking uneven, socked in with heavy vegetation (part of that is for sure due to strict Canadian pesticide laws), and the roadbed often looks soft with mud and poor drainage.  Up until EHH took over CP, CP's trackage often looked much more solid (even without the concrete ties).  I'm sure that's changing now.

To a point brought up earlier about why, with EHH being gone from CN for a number of years now, why CN hasn't recovered from EHH's deferred maintenance/high profit business philosophy, in my opinion, that might be hard since the benchmark for CN (extremely low operating ratio's) probably makes it hard to spend extra money to recover without pissing "Wall Street" off, who are much more focused on getting money out of the company than the company's long term success and viability.  I can only imagine the uproar if CN announced reduced profits and operating ratios to so it could put more money back into it's physical plant.  The current management would probably soon be out of a job (maybe EHH would be brought back after he retires from CP!!!).

There were other times in CP's history when deferred maintenance took place, and in time there was an increase in derailments and injuries.

During the 1970's and 80's, there was a huge upswing in traffic in Western Canada, based on coal and potash exports , and in the 1970's, a healthy economy.

The regional management at CP resisted updating the physical plant, and purchasing new equipment.  Things really started to fall apart in the early 1980's.  The workforce got pretty dispirited and job actions started to happen. 

In the end, the CP head office did a "mass beheading" of regional management that reached from the executive offices right down to the trainmasters and roadmasters. 

The new management carried out massive track improvements and rehabilitations and initiated some mega projects like the Mount MacDonald tunnel.

The result was a dramatic improvement regarding train accidents and employee injuries.

Although I am less familiar with CN management policies, it seems as if a similar shakeup could be due on that property.