Dispatching headaches

Yesterday's WSJ had a story on Hunter Harrison "Apology Tours" as put in place by CP and CSX to win back lost customers. It's been difficult.

“I get on an airplane, go to someone’s office with my hat in my hand and say, ‘I’m sorry about last year, we screwed up and we didn’t do a really good job for you,’ ” CSX Chief Executive Jim Foote said in an interview last month.

 

In the WSJ story they mention Harrison's insistence to customers that they work their carloads seven days a week, stating that it's essential to his brand of precision railroading. He was insulated from the reality that existed outside his office, that some customers close on weekends or run fewer shifts on certain days. This alienated customers, who felt like they were being forced to knuckle under.

 

Looks like everybody follows a "Gauss curve". Learning, improving, reaching an apex, and then finally going down the hill, becoming less and less efficient and "up to date". Many times experience replaces brain accuteness, but sometimes that's not sufficient. It seems to have been the case for Hunter Harrison, may he rest in peace, as it appears he's made an outstanding job some years earlier when at the head of CN.

BTW, from a railfan prospective, that day along screwed CSX line looks like not having been that bad, with some good railroad action. On the same subject I can't recall all the days I spent along railroads dormant in these moments, due to trackwork a little bit further for example...

Dom

 

EHH's 'claim to fame' was taking bloated failing, straight line properties and economizing. With CSX he, at the behest of Mantle Ridge, was sent in to vacuum out every last penny of available cash and to make cash out of the existing facilities of CSX by deactivating them and selling them for scrap. There has never been any attempt under EHH or his successors into growing the company's customer base or growing the the existing customers use of CSX.

EHH should never rest in the hell that he created for the employees and customers of CSX. May Mantle Ridge also go bankrupt - thieves that they are.

 

Something like this happened in the Huntington, WV area over the last several years. There were at least two, possibly more, rail-to-river barge transloading facilities. One of these was very close to downtown, and you could hear the rumble of coal going down the chute more often than not. At one time there was a six-to seven-track ladder yard and a downright cute GE 45-tonner (I saw the side rods) doing the switching. The second one, that I knew of, was about a mile or two upriver, this one part of The Ohio River Company, which had an all-Alco roster as late as 1980! In October 1996 there was a former BN C-415 (4010) doing the switching and I almost slobbered--I've only seen a handful of live Alco's and none as close as that one. That facility had maybe a five to six track yard and did a brisk business until they threw in the towel some years back. Everything was gone by 2016 at the latest; and in 2023 I noted the former C&O belt line (crossing Third Avenue in Huntington at 22nd and 3rd Streets) was all gone. Nothing was left but the ballast but, strangely, the grade crossing signals were still in place!

So again, if anybody treats customers as a problem, they'll find another solution. Granted, there were probably issues, about which I knew nothing, at play but it still seems very short sighted to more or less permanently remove a source of possible income for short term gain. I'm reminded of a story once printed in, maybe, Trains magazine a long time ago: a railroad had a branch line where, later, oil was found! There was hope that the railroad would haul the oil but those hopes were dashed when plans were announced to put in a pipeline. Someone questioned a railroad official about why the road didn't want to haul the oil. The officer's response: "Then we wouldn't get to haul all that pipe".

 

I've heard it said more then once that railroads are no longer run by railroaders.

 

Much too true at the Board Room level, which is inhabited mostly by money manipulators

 

Something like this happened in the Huntington, WV area over the last several years. There were at least two, possibly more, rail-to-river barge transloading facilities. One of these was very close to downtown, and you could hear the rumble of coal going down the chute more often than not. At one time there was a six-to seven-track ladder yard and a downright cute GE 45-tonner (I saw the side rods) doing the switching.

What this tells me is you have an aging facility that isn't set up to take unit trains (so has much higher transportation costs) and is much more expensive to operate. It's near a downtown so the real estate is very valuable. A large flat piece of ground right next to a major city in a mountainous area is worth millions.

And it's serving a coal fired plants, many of whom are converting to natural gas because it's way cheaper.

You have a facility with no upside on business, is very expensive to operate, sitting on incredibly valuable land. You are the rail-water transfer owner, what are you going to do?

Trains magazine a long time ago: a railroad had a branch line where, later, oil was found! There was hope that the railroad would haul the oil but those hopes were dashed when plans were announced to put in a pipeline. Someone questioned a railroad official about why the road didn't want to haul the oil. The officer's response: "Then we wouldn't get to haul all that pipe".

First, the idea from the beginning may have been to use a pipeline. A pipeline is way cheaper for the oil company. The people "hoping" may not have understood that. With the current fracking business, the money is in the frac sand and pipe. The oil has a high risk, sand and pipe almost no risk.

 

At one time, there was a legislated rate benefit to water delivery of coal to the final user. Coal came into B&O's Curtis Bay coal pier where it was loaded on barges that were floated several miles to the Brandon Shores Power Plant - which was serviceable with an all rail connection. Even earlier coal was sent to the Locust Point Coal Pier (predecessor to the Curtis Bay Coal Pier) loaded into barges that were moved 100 yards to the American Sugar plant next door.

I don't know the specifics of how all this worked to make it desirable for the consignees to have this modal transfer take place in delivering their products.

 

In the 1970s and 1980s my employer always shipped a modest percentage of our finished products (not a bulk commodity) via water from a southeastern port to a distribution facility in NJ. This allowed us to serve smaller customers and, as importantly, to keep the railroads on watch that we had a competitive alternative to our large volume of boxcar shipments.

 

When I was forced back into Dispatching in 1990 I exercised seniority on the Tampa Division, which encompassed all CSX trackage in Florida as well as both routes from Jacksonville to Savannah (one via Nahunta and the other via Waycross).

At that time one of the 'hot' trains on the Division was the 'Seminole Coal Train, that operated from Chattahoochee, FL to the Seminole Electric plant at Palatka, FL, via Jacksonville. The contents of the train started out as a rail move from the mine to River Port on the Ohio River. The contents were then dumped into barges that were floated from that river transload facility down to Port St. Joe, FL where the contents of the barges were again loaded into rail cars and the Apalachicola Northern Railroad hauled the trainload from Port St. Joe to Chattahoochee to interchange with CSX. CSX would haul the train from Chattahoochee to the Seminole plant with a crew change at Jacksonville. The loaded train would be dropped at the Seminole plant and the prior day's train that was now empty would be brought back to Jacksonville and then on to Chattahoochee to be given to the AN and repeat the process.

Power on the train was refueled at Jacksonville every other day. At one point in time an experiment was tried with a 30K gallon tank car as a fuel tender to allow the power to operate and be fueled weekly at Jacksonville - my understanding is that the draft and buff forces damaged the frame of the tank car as it had been coupled between the two units that was the standard for the train, after several months the experiment was concluded.

 

mmi16, were you dispatching CSX in the Pascagoula, MS area in the last decades of the 20th century?

A CSX unit (I think?) coal train arrived from the mid-Atlantic coal mine region 2-3 times a week. It went west from Pascagoula across the Pascagoula river to the Graveline siding in Gautier where the power swapped ends. The train then came east and transferred to the Mississippi Export Railroad and up to the Mississippi Power Company Plant Daniel unloading loop. After unloading, the train reversed that previous route and went north on CSX for another load.

It was cool watching a train of loaded 100 ton hoppers "creeping" across the MSE Escatawba River wooden trestle at about 5 mph.

 

Think about how expensive and inefficient that is. It is transloaded twice, dumped twice, uses 2 sets of cars and two sets of engines, plus a set or two of barge equipment and one or two tugs (at least). You could probably haul coal all the way out of Wyoming direct to the utility quicker and more cheaply.

 

Remember - Seminole Electric viewed this operation as its lowest cost option.

I am not their bean counter and I don't know the $$$$$ figures they were looking at and dealing with. Seminole owned the sets of equipment that were used in the service between Port St. Joe and their plant at Palatka. I surmise, but don't know, that CSX equipment was used between the mine and the river transload facility. I don't know any of the details of the barge operation between the Ohio River transload facility and Port St. Joe. One thing that I do know was the CSX Corporation owned Texas Gas Corporation that owned American Commercial Barge Lines and I believe ACBL was the carrier for the inland waters portion of the trip.

I have no idea of the costs of moving those volumes of coal between the Mine and Seminole's Palatka facility. The move I have described provided a 100 car trainload of coal to Seminole's plant daily. Another power plant in the Big Bend area of Florida owned 7 train sets of coal hoppers with the intention of them getting a daily delivery of coal from various mines in Kentucky and other SE coal mines.

 

All of that loading and unloading also produces increased "fines", small bits and particles of coal. Purchasing specifications usually include a maximum percentage of fines because these volumes can be difficult to recover for use. Even so, it seems they figured something out.

 

Remember barges used on the inland waterways have a capacity between 1500 and 3000 tons per barge ie. between 15 and 30 rail car loads. Barges are rarely handled as a single entity. Some barge lash ups have upto 18 barges tied together and shoved by a single tow boat. A 18 barge tow would have the potential to move 54,000 tons or nominally 5.4 trainloads (100 cars 100 net tons per car). When it comes to moving tonnage on the inland waters, speed is not the issue, sustained reliable delivery of known tonnage is the game.

 

I had the NO&M as part of the Mobile Division and Atlanta Division when those divisions were my responsibility. The Mobile Division got reorganized out of existence and parts of it became the Atlanta Division and other parts became the Nashville Division.

The drawback of the Asst. Chief Dispatcher's position was that Road Review of the territory you supervised was not a part of the plan. Without setting foot in the terminals, you don't learn many of the idiocytric moves that take place within terminals. Several of the 11 drawbridges on the NO&M required the Bridge Operators to access their bridge with Track Car Authorities; setting the track car on on dry land and operating to the bridge office to relieve the prior man who would use the authority to return to dry land.