January 27, 2006
HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN:
This Is How To Run A Railroad: The boom in global trade has made the rail business hot again. Norfolk Southern is leading the way by adding technology, marketing and customer service to a sooty old business. (Jonathan Fahey, 02.13.06, Forbes)
Norfolk Southern's 5-mile long switching yard in Elkhart, Ind. looks more 1906 than 2006. Heaps of rusting steel parts, disfigured barrels and stacks of railroad ties litter the dreary expanse. Tufts of brown grass struggle through coarse gravel. The trains are shipping flat-panel televisions and other things that did not even exist a decade ago. So where is the railroad's new technology?Look above the drab boxcars sparsely covered with chipped paint and the 120 train tracks into a glass-walled control tower at the center of the yard. There sit five operations workers behind twinkling computer screens. It is here that Norfolk Southern has finally learned how to run a railroad. All railroad companies are booming these days, thanks to the rise in oil prices, which has made rail-shipped coal more attractive, and to the flattening of the world's economy, which has sent steel, grain and televisions coursing around the globe. U.S. railroads did 1.7 trillion ton-miles of traffic last year, up 2.4% from 2004. Norfolk Southern is shipping these goods more efficiently than competitors like CSX and Union Pacific because it decided to haul a 19th-century business into the 21st.
The 20th Century was a mistake. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 27, 2006 4:19 PM
And they have a DRIP program.
Posted by: Sandy P at January 27, 2006 4:37 PMThe 20th Century was Limited.
Posted by: ghostcat at January 27, 2006 4:39 PMWell yeah OJ if you want to ride coal trains to work, instead of a SUV, then go for it. I'll stick with the pickup, thank you.
Posted by: h-man at January 27, 2006 4:53 PMWe've got coal.
Posted by: oj at January 27, 2006 4:58 PMI once got to see Union Pacific's dispatch center in Omaha a couple years back. It is quite the technological marvel, and it's well hidden from society's view.
Posted by: Brad S at January 27, 2006 5:07 PMWell, he does exhibit a fondness for the latest thing in 19th Century mass transit— the electric trolley (now euphemized as "light rail").
And note how the rail companies seem to want as little to do with moving people as possible.
No money in moving people, obviously. They've been trying to get a high speed rail system between Chicago and St. Louis going for 15-20 years. Ain't gonna happen.
Posted by: jdkelly at January 27, 2006 5:50 PMFunny thing. The other night the wife and I went downtown to see Lyric Opera's production of Rigoletto.
As we live one block from a rr station and the opera house is just across the river from NW'ern station, the idea of a 25 minute ride downtown w/o parking hassles etc sounded pretty good.
Until I checked the schedule.
I thought about OJ and gave a little chuckle as I started up the Ford Explorer.
Posted by: Jim in Chicago at January 27, 2006 5:50 PMWhy would anyone want to travel between St.Louis or Chicago, quickly or not, anyhow? That's the problem with all these high-speed train projects. None is conceived as being part of a network, but each is standing alone, connecting two cities that have no real need for such connections. The only standalone that makes any sort of economic sense is the Los Angeles-Las Vegas one, but even that one has the feel of a glorified Disneyland monorail system.
"Until I checked the schedule."
Back in my undergrad days in Chicago, we'd use the IC (Illinois Central) to get downtown. I remember they had a train that headed south (and home) around 22:00, then one around 01:00. The first was too early, before most shows ended, and the second meant you had to kill at least an hour somwhere. And you didn't want to miss it or else it was either the dreaded CTA or the 06:30 morning run. (And I seem to remember that if you wanted to go north into the Loop after 19:00, good luck...)
Night games at Comisky were a bit better, despite using CTA, as the trains and buses were still running fairly frequently when games ended, but the wait for the transfer from the Dan Ryan line to the 55th busline took place on an open sidewalk on the overpass over the expressway, with not even benches. Especially fun after a rainout.
(Jackson Park line? Are you out of your [expletive deleted] mind? For one thing, all of us have the wrong skin color...)
Posted by: Raoul Ortega at January 27, 2006 7:07 PMRauol, Agreed. Don't know why anyone would want to go to St. Louis from anywhere, but if you want to go from Chicago to St. Louis, there's a perfectly good way. I-55. 41/2 hrs., and you're at your destination rather than the train station. No cabs or buses. Very efficient.
Posted by: jdkelly at January 27, 2006 7:18 PM, so let's replay the 19th.
Posted by: ed at January 27, 2006 7:48 PMThey're still talking high-speed rail in the "Texas Triangle" of Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston and San Antonio, which would makse sense in terms of passenger load, but only if the state funded either dedicated high-speed rail lines and/or helped UP and BNSF dual track and straighten their existing lines to avoid the current bottlenecks with freight rail that leaves trains stuck on sidings while cars on the nearby interstate zip along at 70 mph. And the same holds true for any effective regional passenger rail concept.
Posted by: John at January 28, 2006 10:01 AM