I guess I could look it up, but this PSR business is making how much profit for these railroads? Heard/read somewhere that it's one of those get rich schemes to funnel money to major investors and keep them happy. Don't know. A couple of years ago, UP's Brazos Yard, a one hundred- and fifty-million-dollar investment in my old stomping grounds, was halted after some work had been done. UP CEO stated that the money would be used to lengthen current sidings and construction of new longer sidings to accommodate PSR mega trains. So much for those 250 permanent jobs lost in an area of central Texas that could've benefited. It's always about the money: who's getting it and who's not. We know it's not the depleted overworked crews, especially when dealing with the examples you provided.
@dqvidbarnett...you should own company after all making money is not important as making sure everyone gets a job. Wait, I know, you discovered that no body who runs a business is as smart as you. You will go far pilgrim...LOL 😂
Well....railroads are very profitable right now so PSR must be a part of it. "Get Rich Scheme"??? This is a billion dollar investment with the goal of keeping railroads competitive so that....yes indeed...investors are happy. After all, that is the goal of a publicly traded company. And it's not major. It's minor investors too. It boils down to stock price.
More importantly, railroads are not fast food restaurants. They are critical piece of economic infrastructure that affects ALL Americans. Hey while we are at let's privatize national defense (NOT) and let that play out for the highest bidder. Treat railroad workers with respect and give them the compensation they deserve to keep the country moving. Failure to do so will no end well for all of us.
@@tbernardi001 Railroaders are among the highest paid transportation workers in the USA. There are certainly improvements that could be made and I certainly agree with the word 'respect'. Most however are able to bring home a salary far ahead of other employees in other industries that move our goods.
Excellent video, we have virtually the same issues here on the Thayer Sub too! The trains that run from Memphis, Tennessee to Tulsa, Oklahoma routinely get to well over 9,000 feet and can tip the scales at as much as 14,000 tons. Train of that magnitude can get away with it on the south portion of the line where it's largely flat and straight, but once they enter the north half of the Thayer Subdivision, it becomes a real problem and it's not uncommon for trains to go into emergency there! Also they seem to think it's a good idea to put together these double empty coal trains at Thayer, Missouri at MP 335.1 which is baffling to say the least, as trains begin to climb a very stiff grade at that location that crests roughly 8 miles to the north at a town called Koshkonong and it can REALLY cause some headaches! Bottom line is PSR is killing the Railroad industry, plain and simple.
just an old guy here don`t know crap BUT you run a railroad with NON RR People this is what happens. these guys don`t give a damn the Quick Buck is all they know.
@@cdavid8139 Doesnt matter. Every day is a new day to them, and they never learn from the previous day. Rinse and repeat until they have to file for bankruptcy, at which time the people at the top just take their money and retire to a foreign country where their money cant be touched. Or the government bails them out using tax dollars. Depends on whether politicians have a stake in it or not.
@@SvendleBerries What century are you living in? Railroads in North America (US, MX and CA) are healthy, profitable and are moving amazing tonnage. I'm not sure the government has bailed out any major railroad since the formation of Conrail in 1976. The innovations railroads have made in the past decades are amazing. Not saying nothing is wrong. I second guess the industry daily in my job. But to say they never learn or are about to go bankrupt is an incredible misunderstanding of North American railroading.
@@cdavid8139 Healthy? That's like saying that people who try to shove a whole cake in their mouths are "healthy". Putting several miles of cars together to make as much money as possible all at once isn't healthy. It's short sighted and dangerous. It's one of those things that works okay, as long as nothing ever goes wrong. But when something _does_ go wrong, it causes a disaster.
@@SvendleBerries when railroads began running 70 ton cars people said the same thing. When railroads began running 100 ton cars people said the same thing. Then 110. When railroads began running 40 car 50 ton trains people were going "this is short sighted and dangerous".
NS is the modern version of the Penn Central (minus the real estate investments). If it wasn't for their duopoly, they would be bankrupt. They can't manage power, half-assed PSR, DPU management is still dependent upon WabTec contractors, and middle management (train/yard masters) are filled with non-railroad people who frankly don't know what they are doing (and there are too many of them). They only thing they got right - in their minds - was cutting the extra board to bare minimum. Of course... here they are just following the rest of the industry.
I worked for Conrail from 1979-1984. When I started, many freight trains had 5 people on the crew (and cabins (cabooses)) on the end: an engineer, fireman, conductor and a couple of brakemen The bean counters think that an engineer and conductor are supposed to handle huge freight trains with all the issues: hot boxes, dragging equipment, terrible rails, derailments, people disregarding railroad crossings, people committing suicide, etc, etc. And, you’re NOT allowed to be sick or take any time for health or other appointments - one of my jobs on the railroad was crew dispatcher for Conrail and Amtrak - and it was an eye-opener. People had no life; they were tied to their phones (this was before advent of smartphones) One winter day, I walked a line of track leading into 44th Street Yard in West Philadelphia pouring kerosene around switches and lighting it to keep the switches from freezing. Another night in Port Richmond, the crew had to try to get a caboose on fire that was connected to a tank car to a part of the yard where the fire department could put the fire out There were the people who electrocuted themselves riding on top of trains coming out of 30th Street (I had to type the reports). Railroading is hard, dangerous work - be it freight or dealing with unruly passengers who spit on conductors and throw ballast
And I suppose you've heard that several rail execs were pushing earlier this year for the final goal - engineers only on some routes. The FRA held public hearings on that on 12/14/22.
@@whiteknightcat Arrrgh - terrible , but not surprising. Their ultimate dream/hope/wish is for AI, Artificial Intelligence, that would operate trains (trucks, aircraft, buses) without ‘pesky’ human employees that have the effrontery to need time off, get sick or, be paid fairly
The problem is coal. Coal pays the bills, at 1/3 of profit. When coal finally goes away, in the next decade or so, the railroads will look absolutely terrible for investors.
@@tonyburzio4107 Coal loadings have been decreasng for years, yet over the last half dozen or so years rail profits are through the roof, so by revenue that doesn't add up.
That sounds like my former Congressman Peter DeFazio at 9:40. We need more people like him in Congress to talk about the impact of the changes in railroad operations. One of the things you hear in discussions of airport noise, train noise, blocked crossings, etc. is, "That track-airport-whatever was there when you bought your house. Get over it." But train horns are MUCH louder today than they were 30 years ago or whenever the FRA mandated the insane 90-some db blasts. And a 15,000 foot train is a completely different problem than a 5,000 foot train. If railroads are changing the way they operate, we should change the regulatory climate in which they operate. They are going to PSR themselves into an unpleasant situation because they were managing on one parameter: stock price.
Billions have been spent on PTC. PSR reveals the determination to get as little out of this technology as possible. Longer trains, better operating ratios, higher stock price, shrinking share of freight traffic. "And so they went on taking more and more of less and less until they had all of nothing."
Empty centerbeam cars cause most of the Derailments on most RRs especially when placed directly behind the LOCOs. Mixing of IM & Manifest trains seems to be a regular thing here @ Harrisburg.
checked the NS jobs site, just for giggles. what a disaster. 9 out of 10 present and former employees gave them 1 star of 5, and the unhappiness was overworked, undermanned, and yard masters that are totally clueless about how railroads operate. lotsa "don't apply to work here, if you read this and already do, leave before they fire you!". not a healthy environment, seems.
It’s interesting to me. I talked about this in the Binghamton yard with a railfan I met. Bnsf and up have been using DPU power and their units have been capable of doing it for decades. I live in Montana and you aren’t likely to see a train without a dpu unless it’s an intermodal. It’s interesting to me that it took NS and CSX so long to actually try dpus out and when they do they don’t do it correctly. Unlike ns and csx, bnsf puts enough power on their trains. CSX and ns try to put as little power as possible usung aging locomotives on trains 3 miles long, hoping they don’t fail or stall. If CSX and ns really wanted to make money, maybe they should follow BNSFs model, considering they are the only one to not implement PSR and they make the most profit. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with dpus if used correctly. If you are going to use them, put enough power on the head end and then place a unit on the end and middle if you must. I hate when CSX and ns plays victim acting like they don’t have enough power or crews while they furlough crews and store usable power.
I thought that railroad management had learned that putting all the motive power up front was NOT the most efficient and beneficial way to operate a (long) train! Having mid-train helpers and some "pushing" poer at the rear not only reduces track forces (and hence track maintenance costs) but it also reduces drawbar and buffer forces! As some correspondents have noted, indirectly, the bean-counters are now running the railroads, not the rairoaders!
In general bean-counters have always run the railroads...as they run most industries. There are many times that having the power all on the head-end makes more sense. Sometimes it is a matter of not having DPU equipment available. Sometimes the train tonnage just doesn't justify the extra cost of switching the units in and out.
I live right on the Pittsburgh line, ib Johnstown, and always get a kick of that same kinda chatter, from helper crews in disbelief of the train size. Was a few 12g's recently thats were 25ktons
Having 1 locomotive offline to save fuel as the others are in Run 8 struggling and sucking down more fuel than all 4 in Run 6 doing the same amount of work….SMH.
Non DPU long trains leads to more broken couplings and more lead-car derailments. It's that simple. Distribute the locomotives (and not just one pair) if you want to keep your couplings reasonably loaded. A third-grader could explain it to you - must I find one for you?
pull more tonnage in cars and materials.....long dangerous train setups... That is why DPU'S are being used. Norfolk Southern is an example. Ecclesiastes 8:11***
Why does NS think running 5 units on the head end costs less than 5 units scattered throughout the train? The fuel cost to move a given tonnage is the same, and DPUs reduce the chance of exceeding coupler ratings, and string derailments. This Spring I saw a CSX 2 mile train sit for 4 hours while the conductor checked out a hotbox. This has to cost the railroad. It reminds me of the envirologues who think flushing an 8 gallon toilet twice saves more water than flushing a 12 gallon toilet once. Sooner or later the cost of delays, fixing derailments and paying towns like East Palestine will catch up with NS. And it very likely will inspire extreme regulation of the kind that ruined railroads in the 1950s. Warren Buffett is already trying to dump NS, perhaps because he doesn't want to face questions about how he allowed this mess to develop I think this kind of thing is ultimately caused by b-schools. Instead of promoting experienced people up from the ranks, they hire people who know nothing but management theories. If shareholders don't change things we might end up with an American British Rail.
Dude!! AC you know how much i watch your channel and how am i just now getting recommended this video??? Bro TH-cam is slacking on showing me new content.
We have NO use in this World for Bean Counters. Who Cares if the Bean Counters know how Many Beans are in a Pound of Folger’s Coffee. PSR is Horrible. 🤪👎
That blanket statement is a bit uncalled for. My late father was a 43-year employee for a major timber and forestry products firm as an Accountant and Financial Manager within the Research and Development and Facilities groups. He always joked about "keeping the mad scientists in check", but he always got on very well with them and was quite respected across all levels, because he had a genuine interest in what they were doing and making sure they could do it the best way possible - not with an inflexible "we can't do that because we can't spend any money" attitude. There are some "bean counters" that actually can see the big picture and the effects of their involvement/decisions may have, and do their best to try to take all that into consideration.
@@ModMokkaMatti i agreed with the psr part.not a big fan of blanket statements.also if you think about it we are all so called bean counters.we have to keep our beans$$ in order or we not going very far.
E. Hunter Harrison was a cancer on railroading, and the effects of his "leadership" are still being felt and dealt with today, LONG after he left this life.
I tend to watch alot of railfan videos across multiple channels and I tend to see a common reoccurring theme, NS refuses to run DPU's on just about any train. Whereas CSX, UP, BNSF will all run at least 1 on trains of similar lengths.
I also just seen a long n.s. train in alliance Ohio, I missed the front units butt mid train dpu where a n.s and bnsf,and then the end had to n.s units pushing them.they should be used more often.
Another issue with these stupid long trains is it takes forever to yard them especially at a yard like Enola were most of the receiving tracks are only 50 to 60 cars long, everything gets blocked in the yard and the mainline can be blocked for hours because the train's rear is hanging outside the yard, delaying time sensitive intermodal trains needing to get through Harrisburg. They actually kill efficiency. That 11z used to be more than 1 train symbol, it would run better if it was divided up again!
The current limit with new systems such as PTL (positive train location, just approved) is 5 miles. Train length is not the same as PSR, since BNSF is not PSR and they run long trains too.
What's wrong with NS? Other rr's use auxiĺliary power dpu mid and end, like Up, BNSF and CSX why don't NS. The buck eye forces are incredible at the front of the train the force is enough ro pull the car apart around the coupling. This is a false ekonomy as said it put forces, wear and drag derail more likley on a curve. Not including track shift. Also disterbance in towns, that could cause serious consequences or death in a fire, car crash or medical emergency. May be the cost saving could be paid for by giving local towns medical helecoptrs. Thanks for the video.
The reality is that you do not always have DPU equipped locomotives available. In other instances adding DPUs or breaking the train up afterward isn't always easy depending on many factors.
Great info! Off topic, why do railroads mix in odd hopper cars in unit coal trains? I love still seeing the Conrail coal hoppers but find it odd how they just randomly mix them in among the NS coal cars.
Railroads have always had major investors, since the first engine without flanges. PSR is one reaction to the loss of coal traffic. For now, profits look high because coal hasn't gone away yet. Give it five years. Coal is 1/3 of all profit. Reasonable profit is not the same as profit, and reasonable profit is what the railroads are using to attract capital in the stock market. Reasonable profit is that profit where it is as least as good as other businesses given the same risk. Coal is safe, not risky. Intermodal is risky, so you have to offer more profit to attract investment. The vast majority of investors are pension and 401K funds. When you signed up for your 401K, did you remember to check the box "make as little profit as possible, I want to eat dog food when I retire." No? Weird. So, when coal profits go away and railroad profits fall below the level where you are better off moving your pension funds to Apple or Amazon away from the risky railroads without their safe bet coal demand, you think the railroads will survive?
@@cdavid8139 21 years with Illinois central...3rd generation railway man I can tell you with costumer service declined in the last 50 years, some industries had round the clock switch engines which are now all gone in favor of trucks....railways rely on unit coal and oil trains which are now on a decline and is were PSR comes into effect combining 2 freight trains into one....with the automated highways on the horizon I know some of my former bosses are running scared....with Tesla, Peterbilt and Kenworth all having technology to run a lead truck and have 7 follow, that will be the death of railways in the USA....I'm running OTR right now, it's changing daily, my company we had to watch safety videos on this topic....it's coming really soon....
@@trainandtruckmodeler786 I agree with everything you said here. Customer service has plummeted in the last 50 years (the exception being the short lines). Oil goes up and down but coal will never be what it was. Combining trains makes use of new technology that I'm in favor of....if used wisely. Trucking technology advancements are scary. I agree that there will be long haul driverless trucks in our near future. And it is changing daily. Railroads won't die overnight or in the next 10 years. But long term both rail and trucking will be unrecognizable. Where did you work at IC?
With JB shutting down Coal fired Power Plants, it'll cut Coal traffic on E,W Mainline through Altoona by about 50% We usually see 1 or 2 a day, but there are plants in Baltimore that are using Coal that will either change or being shuttered altogether.
OK, I was a conductor for CP rail in the early 2000s out of Binghamton. Why are NS trains here, is this not CP/D&H anymore? I moved away years ago so I don't know wat goes on there anymore
It is funny watching all these railroaders complain incessantly about PSR when those same railroaders were calling me a “foamer” for saying PSR is going to ruin railroading in America more than the interstate system ever has.
Several comments include the abbreviation PSR. I checked several acronym ‘dictionaries’ and saw nothing that seemed appropriate amongst dozens of definitions. Help!!
The size and weight of the trains now days are becoming to big for the infrastructure that was designed and built in the 19th century. The permanent way needs to be updated. Larger gauge and heavier rail and concrete sleepers. So many derailments.
I'm personally not a fan of PSR and also DPU's. More wait times for customers. Most land barges being worked on sidings instead of bringing entire train to the yard. Just look how 11Z/12Z are being worked at Harrisburg. Just cars without motive powers sitting on the siding of the Buffalo Line at South Ferry and Stoney. I've seen much of one unit up front and second unit in the middle. If front unit goes offline like an engine failure, that train will be not be movable and will take time to uncouple the middle unit. The practice of having a spare unit attached is pretty much an afterthought. Looking at Sunbury line, there is no doubt the operations out of Taylor, they need to have sets of helpers stationed there just so land barges would have no problem limping through that summit. Oh wait they don't, because they sold numerous numbers of SD70ACU's and also religated the SD40E's into local services. I also now beginning to believe they should've invested on the Buffalo Line, because of less track mileage than going VIA Binghamton and it makes no difference to require some helpers on either routes.
The reality is this: corporations do one thing: increase shareholder value. Period. Any romantic notion to the contrary is silly. Railroads have finally joined the cost-cutting bandwagon to "increase shareholder value" via PSR. It's an ongoing process with both successes and failures. This won't happen overnight and mistakes will be made.
That seems to be a common theme with nearly everything these days: Making the shareholders happy, and nothing else. Rules are even rewritten to bypass safety and quality concerns.
Maximizing profits over all else leads to decline as investor value grows and labor the source of the profit goes down then the rate of profit must go down.
Shareholder value is just something they say. The stock charts on most of the publicly traded railroads could be telling a different story. The long run up in these things since the year 2000 might be coming to a stall. I am sure they will send some "DPUs" to the rescue in the form of cooked books just like they did on the Penn-Central.
Diesel since the beginning of time having used by the hold for tonnage guys so they can get the most work done out of the fewest amount of people and to hell with service to the shippers. You see short lines and you call them up an hour after your car is empty and they send a locomotive to come get it so you don't pay a week's worth of per diem charges. Nobody keeps the tractor trailer truck at their dock after it's offloaded for a week or two weeks. With steam they were always hot and all the branch lines that were profitable with a paid off steam engine became unprofitable with a brand new diesel and that was used as an excuse kill the line. The Long Island Railroad with service 8,000 car loads a year. When the New York and Atlantic took over their car loads went to 37,000 because they gave good service. Service is the only thing a railroad has to offer. Now they have ridiculously long unmanageable trains smaller trains are easier to handle. And the pay rate for engineers nowadays sucks ass even though you do the work of 10 people. They had an NFL player who got passed over for the draft so he went to work for NS for $30,000 a year and I'm thinking for $10,000 more a year than what I get for fixing up the schools after their little bastards have torn them up I wouldn't drive trains for that ridiculous amount of money. Railroading used to be a profession it used to be what you were 24/7 you were a Railroader you lived breathed and died by the railroad. Now it's just another job after 5:00 who gives a shit. That's today's attitude on everything which is why today sucks.
When enough shippers get pissed off this will lead to the nationalization of the right-of-ways and the opening of the network to competition. In NS/CSX land, all trackage will be under the jurisdiction of a newly revamped Conrail/Amtrak Shared Assets with multiple companies running trains on the same trackage. Give it a few years and we will see the Amazon Prime Engines heading up the intermodals.
Shippers ARE pissed - their reps testified back in April at the STB. The rails were now calling the shots, telling shippers they couldn't handle all their business due to employee shortages, and telling them to curtail their shipments or be embargoed!
I don't like the black and white filter you use. I would very much prefer full color video, always. It's unnecessary, and doesn't do anything for me, plus it makes identifying individual railcars more difficult. No like for this video.
You know what its like,you have corporate greed in the railroad industry just like any other industry. Management wants to do more work with less and less people. With trains that are 2 or 3 or more miles long there is greater chance of something bad happening. Look what happened up in Canada in 2013 when that oil train with just one person operating it got loose and ran way downgrade and derailed and destroyed Lac Megantic ,Quebec. There should be at least 3 people on board a freight train.,with 2 up front and yes they should still have a caboose on the rear with one person.Look how much time it takes a train to get underway if an air hose pops near and the conductor has to walk all the way back from the headend to fix the problem but if you someone on the end of the train the problem could be solved quicker. You know what psr stands for,pretty stupid railroading.
Really long trains with mid and end DPU's are badass! Loved watching them at my hideout along the Southern Transcon west of Needles, CA when I lived in Las Vegas.
DPUs on heavy unit trains that are moderate in length and operating on territories that have challenging grades makes sense but putting DPUs on damn near every general merchandise train, intermodal train, auto rack train etc does not...run those trains at reasonable lengths and there is not much concern for all of the buff force nonsense they use to justify using DPUs on them...running them unnecessarily makes the operation inefficient because now you have to get to the unit if something goes wrong and you have to switch it out at different locations which takes time and planning.....psr and DPUing is crippling service....it also makes no sense to run trains that don't fit into sidings....railroads ran much smoother and efficient before psr and monster trains
I agree to some extent with your post. However, as with any significant change there will be challenges. Sidings are being lengthened. Locomotives are increasingly smarter. Signal systems are being modified. We are not sending out DPUs on every train. Sometimes it doesn't make sense given the tonnage on that particular day or what the work in transmit might be. One thing I guarantee you....if I use DPUs there will be railfans going "They didn't need it". If we don't use them and have difficulties pulling a grade the same railfans will say "They should have used a DPU"
I had a mixed manifest train the other day. 4970 tons, 39 cars. DP'ed on the rear. One locomotive on the head end, one on the rear. No sense considering two head end locomotives would have been plenty, it just made more work for me when I had to yard it.
They need to operate a extra or 2 trains to prevent this problem The management doesnt care about how long or how heavy there trains are they just want them out of there yard . Upper management just does not hear the workers This is some of the reason Conrail failed
@@FS2K4Pilot how much can it cost to run 2 crews compared to the main track is tied up for countless hours , also the fine the public want to levy on them for blocking traffic . the delays of the freight due to not arriving on time.
@@geraldmarcus947 Yeah. Right. NS alone spends around $700M just on salary for their train crews, not including any bennies or any of that complicated shit. Even if you only have to split half of your trains, that just shot your payroll up by $350M. NOT. GONNA. HAPPEN. They can settle a lot of lawsuits and fines and buy a lot of politicians for a lot less than that. Barring an act of Congress, and the railroads pay a lot of money to prevent that, it won’t ever happen. Ever. As long as it’s significantly cheaper not to, that’s the way they’ll go, every time. Hell, railroad executives probably even tithe heavily in order to ward off even divine intervention.
I see the hold for tonnage guys are still around. The guys who destroyed customer service in the early Diesel age by making shippers wait until they felt like coming to pick up their car and running it in a huge train so they could get more work out of one engineer. I would never be an engineer nowadays. You get one paycheck and you do the work of six c r e w s. Just like with the Chicago Great Western putting 10 F units on the front end of a train. Shorter trains are more easier for the cruise to handle but less profitable. They got you squeeze every ounce that they can get of you. Now when they get to automated trains this will be reversed because there will be no incentive because you won't have an engineer. You can send an engine out to pick up a car with absolutely no labor cost whatsoever. What railroad is going to.
I see it locally. A business in a neighboring city takes about 3 - 4 centerbeams of product per week from UP via a connecting shortline. These days there can be up to a dozen or more empties accumulating on a siding on the shortline before UP will send a local to pick them up. They'll deliver as needed but wait a month to haul out the empties.
Beautiful shots. The railroad management however wants to cut crew sizes with no regard for consequences to the public. When extra long trains run and can cause dangerous delays to safety vehicles and road traffic in the event of problems.
@@RestrictedProceed lol? You know there's many profitable freight operators in Europe as well as some of the nationalized rail companies try to be profitable. You can make scheduled railroading profitable, US railroads are just allergic to that kind of philosophy and associated capital expenditures to compete directly with trucking.
@@maddiekits That's debatable. Most freight operators are profitable (why would anyone operate an unprofitable business?), but they don't pay all the associated costs. In my Central European country, less than 1/6 of the infrastructure manager's operating costs is covered by track usage payments (both from freight and passenger operations), the rest comes from taxpayer pockets. Infrastructure-related investments are financed almost exclusively by subsidies. Moreover, European freight rail operations might be scheduled on paper, but the on-time performance isn't that great. They're plagued with the same issues as the US Class 1s, including low reliabilty of service, inflexibility, lack of capacity and funnily enough, rail is often more expensive than trucking (cost should be the primary advantage of rail transport).
@@FS2K4Pilot True, but still. I don't know the class one railroads of the United States have such a problem with basic things while there predecessors did not have them.
@@vsvnrg3263 There has been change. And there will continue to be change. New technology becomes available. Traffic trends are altered by demand and economics. New management comes along and doesn't like what the predecessor did. But in general CSXT still runs very long trains with distributed power when needed.
Over the hill slow down the hills fast ,tonnage first and safety last. Nothing has changes since I read that in 78. Psr is just another con job like all the the other slogans of an Era gone by. Fun wait till you try and get into Chicago with a 3 mile train. No one wants you because you tie everything up and that doesn't count trying to put it away.
@@josephhigdon2204 I concur that 3 mile long trains running into major cities along certain routes are problematic. We often break up the super long intermodal trains up before they come into LA. I might be wrong. The government may step in. But my belief is that as siding length increases and crew costs rise we will continue to see these huge trains moving. Train length has been increasing since the first wheels turned on steel rail and with technological improvements it won't stop.
actually, PSR in and of itself is NOT bad... the problem with PSR is that it creates EXCESS... and the company can be tempted to cut off those excesses... cutting off excess lowers the operating ratio, which increases monies going into the shareholders pockets... and btw just looked at an article concerning NS and their performance last year... they are getting LAMBASTED by the investment community because the last qtr of 2023 their operating ratio went up from 63% the qtr prior to 73% for the last qtr of 2023... stock professionals are considering downgrading NS's stock
Hunter Harrison titled his two volume encyclopedia on Precission scheduled railroading. PSR works any commodity that does not spoil. Prior DPU locomotives, another system called pacesetter used CPRail on unit coal trains (60 cars back of head end power) as helpers (SD40-2).
Precision Scheduled Railroading. I guess it's supposed to make railroads more efficient and make them financially better, but I'm not sure it's doing either. . .
this is where the Europeans and the Japanese have it all over North American railroading they have short fast efficient trains not these lumbering behemoths that cause no end of problems and inconvenience for those affected in the areas where they break down.
True, but I watch a Norwegian train driver who posts videos and there's just one person on that train, i.e., freight, and responsible for everything including fixing any problems encountered during trips.
It’s been a long tome since trigonometry in 12th grade (50+ years), please convert % grade to angle. I forgot. I’m a mechanical engineer but never had to build roads, car emergency brakes, parking pawls, or train engines so grades in % were not a daily number. The rest of your numbers get your presentation a technical A++. Nice job. It’s something everybody can understand. That is a standard measure of intelligence, being able to educate the uninformed. Take the rest of the day off.
Simple answer: rise over run. 1% rises 1 foot for every 100 feet of run. It's essentially the tangent, but used where the tangent values are very small and make for a more understandable relationship than the angle in degrees.
@@ryguygaming06 That's an approximation that is fairly accurate down in the range of normal RR grades (say 0-3%) but I wouldn't use it for anything much larger than that. A 100% grade is only 45 degrees, not the 90 degrees that approximation would yield.
Yes, the percentage of the grade is the trigonometric tangent, so use the inverse tangent function on a calculator to find the degree measure of the grade. . .
I get the enthusiasm. I wish the railfans/foamers would stop making these kinds of videos. There's so much information you're not aware of. You only have bits and pieces of the story. You're not doing anyone any good by telling partial biased truths. I'm an in the field union officer and there is so much more than the story you tell.
While I respect your position and opinion, I know more than you give me credit for since you don't know me at all. I've said that there are positive points to PSR on many occasions. However, this video is titled "When PSR Goes WRONG." And everything I said in it is true. And as long as I'm responding. While there are good points to PSR, I've seen many more bad points to it as I used to work WITH the railroads and have spent countless hours around them as well as listening to the radio. As I've also pointed out in the past.
@@Trains21 I work for the railroad also, I rather have you railfans guys make videos and take photos , than dealing with having rocks and bricks thrown at my train or even being shot at which has happened to me. And on another note, PSR is a bad joke as far as I am concerned, the railroads might never recover the market share that has been lost!
@@mrjsanchez1 Okay, but I've never thrown a rock or a brick at anyone nor have I ever pulled a gun on anyone. And anyone who has thrown things at you are not railfans. They're vandals and delinquents. And personally, I'd rather viewers who disagree with something I say take the time that it takes to make a video response of their own (I'll watch it), than leaving negative comments on my channel which I get all of the time. The difference is, I don't complain about it on other people's channels. I keep it to myself and cope with it on my own .
@@Trains21 I am a railfan myself, I just think it is kind of silly when railroaders complain about railfans, when we have others who are actually trying do do damage and harm to trains and crews, I do enjoy your excellent videos, Have a Merry Christmas! PS, One thing I find amusing is that I learn more about what is going with the railroad I work for from Railpace Magazine, then I do from management.
@@Trains21 I'm not in favor of PSR, at all, as a business model. Yet if you don't work within it each and everyday, sometimes 60 hrs. per week, you don't really understand what's going on. Working near, or around the railroads isn't the same as BEING a railroader and having to live with these policies and procedures day in and day out.
Norfolk Southern owns the CR reporting mark but YES, Conrail does still exist as a terminal operation in Detroit, North Jersey/NYC and South Jersey/Philadelphia.
Conrail is still around it now a shared assets company. They do switching operations for both NS and CSX. Most cars that still bare the Conrail name are no longer owned by the company they just haven't been renumbered or repainted yet.
@Donald Norfleet From what I understand CSX is phasing out the NYC numbering and replacing them with CSXT numbering. It’s weird seeing boxcars in original Conrail paint with complete Conrail logos and CSXT marks.
@@PM08203 no, CSAO has an industrial branch off of The ACL and the whole of CSAO south Jersey splits off right after the Delaware river. NJDOT/NJ Transit Took over the line in the 80’s / 90’s after Amtrak decided they didn’t want to run it.
I guess I could look it up, but this PSR business is making how much profit for these railroads? Heard/read somewhere that it's one of those get rich schemes to funnel money to major investors and keep them happy. Don't know. A couple of years ago, UP's Brazos Yard, a one hundred- and fifty-million-dollar investment in my old stomping grounds, was halted after some work had been done. UP CEO stated that the money would be used to lengthen current sidings and construction of new longer sidings to accommodate PSR mega trains. So much for those 250 permanent jobs lost in an area of central Texas that could've benefited. It's always about the money: who's getting it and who's not. We know it's not the depleted overworked crews, especially when dealing with the examples you provided.
@dqvidbarnett...you should own company after all making money is not important as making sure everyone gets a job. Wait, I know, you discovered that no body who runs a business is as smart as you. You will go far pilgrim...LOL 😂
@@c.d.porter9366 well, those are certainly words
Well....railroads are very profitable right now so PSR must be a part of it. "Get Rich Scheme"??? This is a billion dollar investment with the goal of keeping railroads competitive so that....yes indeed...investors are happy. After all, that is the goal of a publicly traded company. And it's not major. It's minor investors too. It boils down to stock price.
More importantly, railroads are not fast food restaurants. They are critical piece of economic infrastructure that affects ALL Americans. Hey while we are at let's privatize national defense (NOT) and let that play out for the highest bidder. Treat railroad workers with respect and give them the compensation they deserve to keep the country moving. Failure to do so will no end well for all of us.
@@tbernardi001 Railroaders are among the highest paid transportation workers in the USA. There are certainly improvements that could be made and I certainly agree with the word 'respect'. Most however are able to bring home a salary far ahead of other employees in other industries that move our goods.
I see NS is still running empty centerbeams at the front of their trains. Still haven't learned their lesson from the derailments at Horseshoe curve.
You can run empty centerbeams at the front of your train depending on what the trailing tonnage is or what terrain that consist is going over.
Excellent video, we have virtually the same issues here on the Thayer Sub too! The trains that run from Memphis, Tennessee to Tulsa, Oklahoma routinely get to well over 9,000 feet and can tip the scales at as much as 14,000 tons. Train of that magnitude can get away with it on the south portion of the line where it's largely flat and straight, but once they enter the north half of the Thayer Subdivision, it becomes a real problem and it's not uncommon for trains to go into emergency there! Also they seem to think it's a good idea to put together these double empty coal trains at Thayer, Missouri at MP 335.1 which is baffling to say the least, as trains begin to climb a very stiff grade at that location that crests roughly 8 miles to the north at a town called Koshkonong and it can REALLY cause some headaches! Bottom line is PSR is killing the Railroad industry, plain and simple.
just an old guy here don`t know crap BUT you run a railroad with NON RR People this is what happens. these guys don`t give a damn the Quick Buck is all they know.
Quick Buck? Do you realize the massive long-term investments North American railroads have put into their infrastructure in the past 10 years?
@@cdavid8139
Doesnt matter. Every day is a new day to them, and they never learn from the previous day. Rinse and repeat until they have to file for bankruptcy, at which time the people at the top just take their money and retire to a foreign country where their money cant be touched. Or the government bails them out using tax dollars. Depends on whether politicians have a stake in it or not.
@@SvendleBerries What century are you living in? Railroads in North America (US, MX and CA) are healthy, profitable and are moving amazing tonnage. I'm not sure the government has bailed out any major railroad since the formation of Conrail in 1976. The innovations railroads have made in the past decades are amazing. Not saying nothing is wrong. I second guess the industry daily in my job. But to say they never learn or are about to go bankrupt is an incredible misunderstanding of North American railroading.
@@cdavid8139
Healthy? That's like saying that people who try to shove a whole cake in their mouths are "healthy". Putting several miles of cars together to make as much money as possible all at once isn't healthy. It's short sighted and dangerous.
It's one of those things that works okay, as long as nothing ever goes wrong. But when something _does_ go wrong, it causes a disaster.
@@SvendleBerries when railroads began running 70 ton cars people said the same thing. When railroads began running 100 ton cars people said the same thing. Then 110. When railroads began running 40 car 50 ton trains people were going "this is short sighted and dangerous".
NS is the modern version of the Penn Central (minus the real estate investments). If it wasn't for their duopoly, they would be bankrupt. They can't manage power, half-assed PSR, DPU management is still dependent upon WabTec contractors, and middle management (train/yard masters) are filled with non-railroad people who frankly don't know what they are doing (and there are too many of them). They only thing they got right - in their minds - was cutting the extra board to bare minimum. Of course... here they are just following the rest of the industry.
I worked for Conrail from 1979-1984. When I started, many freight trains had 5 people on the crew (and cabins (cabooses)) on the end: an engineer, fireman, conductor and a couple of brakemen
The bean counters think that an engineer and conductor are supposed to handle huge freight trains with all the issues: hot boxes, dragging equipment, terrible rails, derailments, people disregarding railroad crossings, people committing suicide, etc, etc. And, you’re NOT allowed to be sick or take any time for health or other appointments - one of my jobs on the railroad was crew dispatcher for Conrail and Amtrak - and it was an eye-opener. People had no life; they were tied to their phones (this was before advent of smartphones)
One winter day, I walked a line of track leading into 44th Street Yard in West Philadelphia pouring kerosene around switches and lighting it to keep the switches from freezing. Another night in Port Richmond, the crew had to try to get a caboose on fire that was connected to a tank car to a part of the yard where the fire department could put the fire out
There were the people who electrocuted themselves riding on top of trains coming out of 30th Street (I had to type the reports).
Railroading is hard, dangerous work - be it freight or dealing with unruly passengers who spit on conductors and throw ballast
And I suppose you've heard that several rail execs were pushing earlier this year for the final goal - engineers only on some routes. The FRA held public hearings on that on 12/14/22.
@@whiteknightcat Arrrgh - terrible , but not surprising. Their ultimate dream/hope/wish is for AI, Artificial Intelligence, that would operate trains (trucks, aircraft, buses) without ‘pesky’ human employees that have the effrontery to need time off, get sick or, be paid fairly
The problem is coal. Coal pays the bills, at 1/3 of profit. When coal finally goes away, in the next decade or so, the railroads will look absolutely terrible for investors.
@@tonyburzio4107 Coal loadings have been decreasng for years, yet over the last half dozen or so years rail profits are through the roof, so by revenue that doesn't add up.
It’s not the bean counters, it’s the greedy executives and stockholders who want to increase the company’s stock earnings so they make more money.
That sounds like my former Congressman Peter DeFazio at 9:40. We need more people like him in Congress to talk about the impact of the changes in railroad operations. One of the things you hear in discussions of airport noise, train noise, blocked crossings, etc. is, "That track-airport-whatever was there when you bought your house. Get over it." But train horns are MUCH louder today than they were 30 years ago or whenever the FRA mandated the insane 90-some db blasts. And a 15,000 foot train is a completely different problem than a 5,000 foot train.
If railroads are changing the way they operate, we should change the regulatory climate in which they operate. They are going to PSR themselves into an unpleasant situation because they were managing on one parameter: stock price.
That was Peter D.
Billions have been spent on PTC. PSR reveals the determination to get as little out of this technology as possible. Longer trains, better operating ratios, higher stock price, shrinking share of freight traffic. "And so they went on taking more and more of less and less until they had all of nothing."
Empty centerbeam cars cause most of the Derailments on most RRs especially when placed directly behind the LOCOs. Mixing of IM & Manifest trains seems to be a regular thing here @ Harrisburg.
Totally agree yet this video shows 6 locomotives pulling a mixed manifest with 3 empty center beams behind the head end power.
I haven't seen a Consolidated Freight trailer in ages!
And not all rusted out..
Can you imagine the PSI strain at the first coupler. Must be enormous.
I feel like the title is a bit wrong... PSR is wrong in the first place lol
100%
checked the NS jobs site, just for giggles. what a disaster. 9 out of 10 present and former employees gave them 1 star of 5, and the unhappiness was overworked, undermanned, and yard masters that are totally clueless about how railroads operate. lotsa "don't apply to work here, if you read this and already do, leave before they fire you!". not a healthy environment, seems.
Consolidated Frieght trailer in the corner 😍
It’s interesting to me. I talked about this in the Binghamton yard with a railfan I met. Bnsf and up have been using DPU power and their units have been capable of doing it for decades. I live in Montana and you aren’t likely to see a train without a dpu unless it’s an intermodal. It’s interesting to me that it took NS and CSX so long to actually try dpus out and when they do they don’t do it correctly. Unlike ns and csx, bnsf puts enough power on their trains. CSX and ns try to put as little power as possible usung aging locomotives on trains 3 miles long, hoping they don’t fail or stall. If CSX and ns really wanted to make money, maybe they should follow BNSFs model, considering they are the only one to not implement PSR and they make the most profit. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with dpus if used correctly. If you are going to use them, put enough power on the head end and then place a unit on the end and middle if you must. I hate when CSX and ns plays victim acting like they don’t have enough power or crews while they furlough crews and store usable power.
I thought that railroad management had learned that putting all the motive power up front was NOT the most efficient and beneficial way to operate a (long) train! Having mid-train helpers and some "pushing" poer at the rear not only reduces track forces (and hence track maintenance costs) but it also reduces drawbar and buffer forces! As some correspondents have noted, indirectly, the bean-counters are now running the railroads, not the rairoaders!
In general bean-counters have always run the railroads...as they run most industries. There are many times that having the power all on the head-end makes more sense. Sometimes it is a matter of not having DPU equipment available. Sometimes the train tonnage just doesn't justify the extra cost of switching the units in and out.
I see Union Pacific going through Weber Canyon east of Ogden, Utah. One GE in the rear and sometimes one GE in the middle. UP is not shy about power.
No they are not!
I live right on the Pittsburgh line, ib Johnstown, and always get a kick of that same kinda chatter, from helper crews in disbelief of the train size. Was a few 12g's recently thats were 25ktons
Having 1 locomotive offline to save fuel as the others are in Run 8 struggling and sucking down more fuel than all 4 in Run 6 doing the same amount of work….SMH.
If you put the other engine online it would run in number 8 also. I'm not siding with them . That's just how they count beans .
It's to much power, you'll literally rip your train apart. That's why we can't run all 4.
Non DPU long trains leads to more broken couplings and more lead-car derailments. It's that simple.
Distribute the locomotives (and not just one pair) if you want to keep your couplings reasonably loaded. A third-grader could explain it to you - must I find one for you?
It is not that simple.
pull more tonnage in cars and materials.....long dangerous train setups... That is why DPU'S are being used. Norfolk Southern is an example. Ecclesiastes 8:11***
Blame Hunter Harrison and all the managers who feel in line with his stupidity and the owners who continue to let this happen.
Why does NS think running 5 units on the head end costs less than 5 units scattered throughout the train? The fuel cost to move a given tonnage is the same, and DPUs reduce the chance of exceeding coupler ratings, and string derailments. This Spring I saw a CSX 2 mile train sit for 4 hours while the conductor checked out a hotbox. This has to cost the railroad. It reminds me of the envirologues who think flushing an 8 gallon toilet twice saves more water than flushing a 12 gallon toilet once. Sooner or later the cost of delays, fixing derailments and paying towns like East Palestine will catch up with NS. And it very likely will inspire extreme regulation of the kind that ruined railroads in the 1950s. Warren Buffett is already trying to dump NS, perhaps because he doesn't want to face questions about how he allowed this mess to develop
I think this kind of thing is ultimately caused by b-schools. Instead of promoting experienced people up from the ranks, they hire people who know nothing but management theories. If shareholders don't change things we might end up with an
American British Rail.
Warren buffet has nothing to do with Norfolk southern? He is a large shareholder in BNSF , Please tell us facts about your statement?
We don't run 5 locomotives on the front lmao.
@@trentongray1818…Train 21 video proof to the contrary…duh! Wtf did you think this video was about? Efficiencies of NS? 😂😅
@Mrright87ok, 5 locos in front w/2 offline but no dpus in middle or back n it stalls or runs away…
Dude!! AC you know how much i watch your channel and how am i just now getting recommended this video??? Bro TH-cam is slacking on showing me new content.
We have NO use in this World for Bean Counters. Who Cares if the Bean Counters know how Many Beans are in a Pound of Folger’s Coffee. PSR is Horrible. 🤪👎
Agreed 💯👀
That blanket statement is a bit uncalled for. My late father was a 43-year employee for a major timber and forestry products firm as an Accountant and Financial Manager within the Research and Development and Facilities groups. He always joked about "keeping the mad scientists in check", but he always got on very well with them and was quite respected across all levels, because he had a genuine interest in what they were doing and making sure they could do it the best way possible - not with an inflexible "we can't do that because we can't spend any money" attitude. There are some "bean counters" that actually can see the big picture and the effects of their involvement/decisions may have, and do their best to try to take all that into consideration.
@@ModMokkaMatti i agreed with the psr part.not a big fan of blanket statements.also if you think about it we are all so called bean counters.we have to keep our beans$$ in order or we not going very far.
E. Hunter Harrison was a cancer on railroading, and the effects of his "leadership" are still being felt and dealt with today, LONG after he left this life.
Try running a business without bean counters. You won’t have anyone to tell you you’re broke.
I tend to watch alot of railfan videos across multiple channels and I tend to see a common reoccurring theme, NS refuses to run DPU's on just about any train. Whereas CSX, UP, BNSF will all run at least 1 on trains of similar lengths.
That makes my heart leap with joy to see ALCO's pushing out a class 1!
Nice.
Money managers running railroads. Chaos ensues. Excellent video AC.
I also just seen a long n.s. train in alliance Ohio, I missed the front units butt mid train dpu where a n.s and bnsf,and then the end had to n.s units pushing them.they should be used more often.
"We'll probably be a little bit." LOL. Great video!
Another issue with these stupid long trains is it takes forever to yard them especially at a yard like Enola were most of the receiving tracks are only 50 to 60 cars long, everything gets blocked in the yard and the mainline can be blocked for hours because the train's rear is hanging outside the yard, delaying time sensitive intermodal trains needing to get through Harrisburg. They actually kill efficiency. That 11z used to be more than 1 train symbol, it would run better if it was divided up again!
Harder then you think... You got to have conductors and engineer's but you gotta have specific requirements for both so it gonna take time
The current limit with new systems such as PTL (positive train location, just approved) is 5 miles. Train length is not the same as PSR, since BNSF is not PSR and they run long trains too.
Some if not the longest trains in the usa
What's wrong with NS?
Other rr's use auxiĺliary power dpu mid and end, like Up, BNSF and CSX why don't NS.
The buck eye forces are incredible at the front of the train the force is enough ro pull the car apart around the coupling.
This is a false ekonomy as said it put forces, wear and drag derail more likley on a curve.
Not including track shift.
Also disterbance in towns, that could cause serious consequences or death in a fire, car crash or medical emergency.
May be the cost saving could be paid for by giving local towns medical helecoptrs.
Thanks for the video.
The reality is that you do not always have DPU equipped locomotives available. In other instances adding DPUs or breaking the train up afterward isn't always easy depending on many factors.
Hope you're having a great weekend AC!!
Thanks Tony.. I am, how bout you?
@@Trains21 Pretty good!! Can't complain.
@@RailfanNetwork Yes, you could.. It just wouldn't do any good!
Great info! Off topic, why do railroads mix in odd hopper cars in unit coal trains? I love still seeing the Conrail coal hoppers but find it odd how they just randomly mix them in among the NS coal cars.
It's just how they get processed. A train may need 10 extra cars and the only ones available might be off another type. That's one possible scenario.
@@Trains21 thank you for explaining! 🚂
Railroads have always had major investors, since the first engine without flanges.
PSR is one reaction to the loss of coal traffic. For now, profits look high because coal hasn't gone away yet. Give it five years. Coal is 1/3 of all profit.
Reasonable profit is not the same as profit, and reasonable profit is what the railroads are using to attract capital in the stock market. Reasonable profit is that profit where it is as least as good as other businesses given the same risk. Coal is safe, not risky. Intermodal is risky, so you have to offer more profit to attract investment. The vast majority of investors are pension and 401K funds. When you signed up for your 401K, did you remember to check the box "make as little profit as possible, I want to eat dog food when I retire." No? Weird. So, when coal profits go away and railroad profits fall below the level where you are better off moving your pension funds to Apple or Amazon away from the risky railroads without their safe bet coal demand, you think the railroads will survive?
Railways in the USA will certainly not survive the next decade...
@@trainandtruckmodeler786 the next decade? Absolutely they will. Five decades from now railroads will not really resemble what they are today.
@@cdavid8139 21 years with Illinois central...3rd generation railway man I can tell you with costumer service declined in the last 50 years, some industries had round the clock switch engines which are now all gone in favor of trucks....railways rely on unit coal and oil trains which are now on a decline and is were PSR comes into effect combining 2 freight trains into one....with the automated highways on the horizon I know some of my former bosses are running scared....with Tesla, Peterbilt and Kenworth all having technology to run a lead truck and have 7 follow, that will be the death of railways in the USA....I'm running OTR right now, it's changing daily, my company we had to watch safety videos on this topic....it's coming really soon....
@@trainandtruckmodeler786 I agree with everything you said here. Customer service has plummeted in the last 50 years (the exception being the short lines). Oil goes up and down but coal will never be what it was. Combining trains makes use of new technology that I'm in favor of....if used wisely. Trucking technology advancements are scary. I agree that there will be long haul driverless trucks in our near future. And it is changing daily. Railroads won't die overnight or in the next 10 years. But long term both rail and trucking will be unrecognizable. Where did you work at IC?
With JB shutting down Coal fired Power Plants, it'll cut Coal traffic on E,W Mainline through Altoona by about 50% We usually see 1 or 2 a day, but there are plants in Baltimore that are using Coal that will either change or being shuttered altogether.
OK, I was a conductor for CP rail in the early 2000s out of Binghamton. Why are NS trains here, is this not CP/D&H anymore? I moved away years ago so I don't know wat goes on there anymore
CP sold the line in 2015 and NS picked it up.
It is funny watching all these railroaders complain incessantly about PSR when those same railroaders were calling me a “foamer” for saying PSR is going to ruin railroading in America more than the interstate system ever has.
UP dragged a whopping 1164 axle coal train with two units in the front and 3 units in the middle and one unit at the back which were all 6 axle units.
I, always liked the GP 38. Geeps
Several comments include the abbreviation PSR. I checked several acronym ‘dictionaries’ and saw nothing that seemed appropriate amongst dozens of definitions. Help!!
Precision Scheduled Railroading
@@Trains21 - Neophyte educated! Thank you very much.
The size and weight of the trains now days are becoming to big for the infrastructure that was designed and built in the 19th century. The permanent way needs to be updated. Larger gauge and heavier rail and concrete sleepers. So many derailments.
* Larger gauge?*
I'm personally not a fan of PSR and also DPU's. More wait times for customers. Most land barges being worked on sidings instead of bringing entire train to the yard. Just look how 11Z/12Z are being worked at Harrisburg. Just cars without motive powers sitting on the siding of the Buffalo Line at South Ferry and Stoney. I've seen much of one unit up front and second unit in the middle. If front unit goes offline like an engine failure, that train will be not be movable and will take time to uncouple the middle unit. The practice of having a spare unit attached is pretty much an afterthought. Looking at Sunbury line, there is no doubt the operations out of Taylor, they need to have sets of helpers stationed there just so land barges would have no problem limping through that summit. Oh wait they don't, because they sold numerous numbers of SD70ACU's and also religated the SD40E's into local services. I also now beginning to believe they should've invested on the Buffalo Line, because of less track mileage than going VIA Binghamton and it makes no difference to require some helpers on either routes.
Awesome ending!
The reality is this: corporations do one thing: increase shareholder value. Period. Any romantic notion to the contrary is silly. Railroads have finally joined the cost-cutting bandwagon to "increase shareholder value" via PSR. It's an ongoing process with both successes and failures. This won't happen overnight and mistakes will be made.
That seems to be a common theme with nearly everything these days: Making the shareholders happy, and nothing else. Rules are even rewritten to bypass safety and quality concerns.
Maximizing profits over all else leads to decline as investor value grows and labor the source of the profit goes down then the rate of profit must go down.
Shareholder value is just something they say. The stock charts on most of the publicly traded railroads could be telling a different story. The long run up in these things since the year 2000 might be coming to a stall. I am sure they will send some "DPUs" to the rescue in the form of cooked books just like they did on the Penn-Central.
Diesel since the beginning of time having used by the hold for tonnage guys so they can get the most work done out of the fewest amount of people and to hell with service to the shippers. You see short lines and you call them up an hour after your car is empty and they send a locomotive to come get it so you don't pay a week's worth of per diem charges. Nobody keeps the tractor trailer truck at their dock after it's offloaded for a week or two weeks. With steam they were always hot and all the branch lines that were profitable with a paid off steam engine became unprofitable with a brand new diesel and that was used as an excuse kill the line. The Long Island Railroad with service 8,000 car loads a year. When the New York and Atlantic took over their car loads went to 37,000 because they gave good service. Service is the only thing a railroad has to offer. Now they have ridiculously long unmanageable trains smaller trains are easier to handle. And the pay rate for engineers nowadays sucks ass even though you do the work of 10 people. They had an NFL player who got passed over for the draft so he went to work for NS for $30,000 a year and I'm thinking for $10,000 more a year than what I get for fixing up the schools after their little bastards have torn them up I wouldn't drive trains for that ridiculous amount of money. Railroading used to be a profession it used to be what you were 24/7 you were a Railroader you lived breathed and died by the railroad. Now it's just another job after 5:00 who gives a shit. That's today's attitude on everything which is why today sucks.
When enough shippers get pissed off this will lead to the nationalization of the right-of-ways and the opening of the network to competition. In NS/CSX land, all trackage will be under the jurisdiction of a newly revamped Conrail/Amtrak Shared Assets with multiple companies running trains on the same trackage. Give it a few years and we will see the Amazon Prime Engines heading up the intermodals.
Good luck, when it comes to the transport business the rail road industry is like god, almost cant be touched.
@@princeofdeath7696 Tell that to Penn Central!!!
Shippers ARE pissed - their reps testified back in April at the STB. The rails were now calling the shots, telling shippers they couldn't handle all their business due to employee shortages, and telling them to curtail their shipments or be embargoed!
Penn Central was caused by the government.
how young are you. nationalization dont work the fed gov tryed it in 1918
I don't like the black and white filter you use. I would very much prefer full color video, always. It's unnecessary, and doesn't do anything for me, plus it makes identifying individual railcars more difficult. No like for this video.
You know what its like,you have corporate greed in the railroad industry just like any other industry. Management wants to do more work with less and less people. With trains that are 2 or 3 or more miles long there is greater chance of something bad happening. Look what happened up in Canada in 2013 when that oil train with just one person operating it got loose and ran way downgrade and derailed and destroyed Lac Megantic ,Quebec. There should be at least 3 people on board a freight train.,with 2 up front and yes they should still have a caboose on the rear with one person.Look how much time it takes a train to get underway if an air hose pops near and the conductor has to walk all the way back from the headend to fix the problem but if you someone on the end of the train the problem could be solved quicker. You know what psr stands for,pretty stupid railroading.
Enjoyed the video, thanks DJ...!
PSR=Precision Scheduled Railroad. I had to look it up.
Awsome train action.
Really long trains with mid and end DPU's are badass! Loved watching them at my hideout along the Southern Transcon west of Needles, CA when I lived in Las Vegas.
At 7:30, squealing car, you're dragging brakes.
That's probably the flange of the wheel along the inside of the rail has nothing to do with brakes.
DPUs on heavy unit trains that are moderate in length and operating on territories that have challenging grades makes sense but putting DPUs on damn near every general merchandise train, intermodal train, auto rack train etc does not...run those trains at reasonable lengths and there is not much concern for all of the buff force nonsense they use to justify using DPUs on them...running them unnecessarily makes the operation inefficient because now you have to get to the unit if something goes wrong and you have to switch it out at different locations which takes time and planning.....psr and DPUing is crippling service....it also makes no sense to run trains that don't fit into sidings....railroads ran much smoother and efficient before psr and monster trains
I agree to some extent with your post. However, as with any significant change there will be challenges. Sidings are being lengthened. Locomotives are increasingly smarter. Signal systems are being modified. We are not sending out DPUs on every train. Sometimes it doesn't make sense given the tonnage on that particular day or what the work in transmit might be. One thing I guarantee you....if I use DPUs there will be railfans going "They didn't need it". If we don't use them and have difficulties pulling a grade the same railfans will say "They should have used a DPU"
I had a mixed manifest train the other day. 4970 tons, 39 cars. DP'ed on the rear. One locomotive on the head end, one on the rear. No sense considering two head end locomotives would have been plenty, it just made more work for me when I had to yard it.
@@cody8217 Agreed. Give me 2 5000 HP locomotives on the head end of 5000 trailing tons rather than make me DPU the train.
@@cody8217 my point exactly
They need to operate a extra or 2 trains to prevent this problem The management doesnt care about how long or how heavy there trains are they just want them out of there yard . Upper management just does not hear the workers This is some of the reason Conrail failed
Costs more money.
@@FS2K4Pilot how much can it cost to run 2 crews compared to the main track is tied up for countless hours , also the fine the public want to levy on them for blocking traffic . the delays of the freight due to not arriving on time.
@@geraldmarcus947 Yeah. Right.
NS alone spends around $700M just on salary for their train crews, not including any bennies or any of that complicated shit. Even if you only have to split half of your trains, that just shot your payroll up by $350M.
NOT. GONNA. HAPPEN.
They can settle a lot of lawsuits and fines and buy a lot of politicians for a lot less than that. Barring an act of Congress, and the railroads pay a lot of money to prevent that, it won’t ever happen. Ever. As long as it’s significantly cheaper not to, that’s the way they’ll go, every time. Hell, railroad executives probably even tithe heavily in order to ward off even divine intervention.
excellent, enjoyed, educational. thanks
Glad you enjoyed it
99 hoppers ? wow
I see the hold for tonnage guys are still around. The guys who destroyed customer service in the early Diesel age by making shippers wait until they felt like coming to pick up their car and running it in a huge train so they could get more work out of one engineer. I would never be an engineer nowadays. You get one paycheck and you do the work of six c r e w s. Just like with the Chicago Great Western putting 10 F units on the front end of a train. Shorter trains are more easier for the cruise to handle but less profitable. They got you squeeze every ounce that they can get of you. Now when they get to automated trains this will be reversed because there will be no incentive because you won't have an engineer. You can send an engine out to pick up a car with absolutely no labor cost whatsoever. What railroad is going to.
I see it locally. A business in a neighboring city takes about 3 - 4 centerbeams of product per week from UP via a connecting shortline. These days there can be up to a dozen or more empties accumulating on a siding on the shortline before UP will send a local to pick them up. They'll deliver as needed but wait a month to haul out the empties.
$$$ profit for the investors.....Vanguard......Blackrock.....
And every mutual fund, 401k and pension fund invested. It’s not just the big boys. Fiduciary duty is to all investors.
Hey my friend Bow, NH is pronounced "Bo". I lived there from '86 to '93.
That's what I used to call it until a friend pronounced it differently!
Looks like NS is using the old SP train makeup play book
Beautiful shots. The railroad management however wants to cut crew sizes with no regard for consequences to the public. When extra long trains run and can cause dangerous delays to safety vehicles and road traffic in the event of problems.
EVP at 21:42 "Big mountain"
How does Yatesville hill compare to Clark’s Summit?
Yatesville is about 1 1/2 - 2 miles long, the Clarksy is 10 miles long.
0:53 You meant 9510?
I live right outside of bow, cool
In Europe they don’t even need PSR at all
That is because in Europe you are already running what we are trying to get to...scheduled railroading
Because they don't really care how much money they'll lose. The taxpayer will pay...
@@RestrictedProceed lol? You know there's many profitable freight operators in Europe as well as some of the nationalized rail companies try to be profitable. You can make scheduled railroading profitable, US railroads are just allergic to that kind of philosophy and associated capital expenditures to compete directly with trucking.
@@maddiekits That's debatable. Most freight operators are profitable (why would anyone operate an unprofitable business?), but they don't pay all the associated costs. In my Central European country, less than 1/6 of the infrastructure manager's operating costs is covered by track usage payments (both from freight and passenger operations), the rest comes from taxpayer pockets. Infrastructure-related investments are financed almost exclusively by subsidies.
Moreover, European freight rail operations might be scheduled on paper, but the on-time performance isn't that great. They're plagued with the same issues as the US Class 1s, including low reliabilty of service, inflexibility, lack of capacity and funnily enough, rail is often more expensive than trucking (cost should be the primary advantage of rail transport).
Y’all can thank E hunter harrison the IC 🤡🤡 for this
Thanks for sharing
Consolidated Freightways trailer
It gets a lot of comments!
8:15 Air hose popped
KFC at 21:28. RIP Stobe!
Why can't we go back to the railroads before cars and planes? The PRR and NYC did not have these problems.
No they did not.
Because we now have cars and planes.
@@FS2K4Pilot True, but still. I don't know the class one railroads of the United States have such a problem with basic things while there predecessors did not have them.
@@stephenmccloughan7541 I would examine the respective amounts of freight tonnage being moved then and now.
@@FS2K4Pilot True, but almost everything was transported by train then. But I do see where you stand
i'm not in us. didnt csx try this oversized bs years ago and they had to get rid of all the top (non-railroad) brass because of false economies?
CSXT is still running huge trains. Nothing has changed.
@@cdavid8139 , i thought the new management shortened them. so no change?
@@vsvnrg3263 There has been change. And there will continue to be change. New technology becomes available. Traffic trends are altered by demand and economics. New management comes along and doesn't like what the predecessor did. But in general CSXT still runs very long trains with distributed power when needed.
Over the hill slow down the hills fast ,tonnage first and safety last. Nothing has changes since I read that in 78. Psr is just another con job like all the the other slogans of an Era gone by. Fun wait till you try and get into Chicago with a 3 mile train. No one wants you because you tie everything up and that doesn't count trying to put it away.
@@josephhigdon2204 I concur that 3 mile long trains running into major cities along certain routes are problematic. We often break up the super long intermodal trains up before they come into LA. I might be wrong. The government may step in. But my belief is that as siding length increases and crew costs rise we will continue to see these huge trains moving. Train length has been increasing since the first wheels turned on steel rail and with technological improvements it won't stop.
Nice to see busy Pushers. And I mean inadvertent Pushers, lol.
Well instead of junkies or storing engines,use them for dpu s or.pushers,you can't be thar cheap,oh yes you can,
That's junking units or storing them.
Converting older units to DPU capable units isn't inexpensive.
Hey Just so you know NS phased out PSR a while ago.
It'll be back as a new major investment bank is doing a hostile takeover.
actually, PSR in and of itself is NOT bad... the problem with PSR is that it creates EXCESS... and the company can be tempted to cut off those excesses... cutting off excess lowers the operating ratio, which increases monies going into the shareholders pockets... and btw just looked at an article concerning NS and their performance last year... they are getting LAMBASTED by the investment community because the last qtr of 2023 their operating ratio went up from 63% the qtr prior to 73% for the last qtr of 2023... stock professionals are considering downgrading NS's stock
More than a ton a foot. Wow.
Why use PSR does it save money versus the dpu
Good way to find the weakest link.
What does PSR stand for?
Precision Scheduled Railroading, which it is neither precise nor scheduled, ironically.
Hunter Harrison titled his two volume encyclopedia on Precission scheduled railroading. PSR works any commodity that does not spoil.
Prior DPU locomotives, another system called pacesetter used CPRail on unit coal trains (60 cars back of head end power) as helpers (SD40-2).
awesome video
Was ist das PSR?
Precision Scheduled Railroading. I guess it's supposed to make railroads more efficient and make them financially better, but I'm not sure it's doing either. . .
Psr lol. Just a way to lay people off, and their bottom line bigger.
you made a error on the announcement the number was 9510 not 9610 on the third unit just wanted to correct you.
Roberto Roman
No, 9510 was in the pusher/helpers -- 9610 was the third lead loco.
I love the Black, but the secret GINGER NINJA attached!!!!
this is where the Europeans and the Japanese have it all over North American railroading they have short fast efficient trains not these lumbering behemoths that cause no end of problems and inconvenience for those affected in the areas where they break down.
Most likely government owned so no concern about the use of labor for loco crews.
This comment just makes me suggest you think this happens often; as if that wasn’t already factored in
The Japanese can't even keep a nuclear reactor from blowing up. Ha.
True, but I watch a Norwegian train driver who posts videos and there's just one person on that train, i.e., freight, and responsible for everything including fixing any problems encountered during trips.
@@davidbarnett9312 If you are talking about rail cow girl then yes and their freights are short and fast
It’s been a long tome since trigonometry in 12th grade (50+ years), please convert % grade to angle. I forgot. I’m a mechanical engineer but never had to build roads, car emergency brakes, parking pawls, or train engines so grades in % were not a daily number. The rest of your numbers get your presentation a technical A++. Nice job. It’s something everybody can understand. That is a standard measure of intelligence, being able to educate the uninformed. Take the rest of the day off.
Just know that a 1% grade triples the amount of drag over level track, and 2.2% is the standard steep grade in mainline U.S. railroads.
Simple answer: rise over run. 1% rises 1 foot for every 100 feet of run. It's essentially the tangent, but used where the tangent values are very small and make for a more understandable relationship than the angle in degrees.
you can just multiply it by 0.9 to get the degree angle. For example, a 2% slope would be 2x0.9 or 1.8 degrees
@@ryguygaming06 That's an approximation that is fairly accurate down in the range of normal RR grades (say 0-3%) but I wouldn't use it for anything much larger than that. A 100% grade is only 45 degrees, not the 90 degrees that approximation would yield.
Yes, the percentage of the grade is the trigonometric tangent, so use the inverse tangent function on a calculator to find the degree measure of the grade. . .
This is DISGUSTING! I'm glad that S.O.B is rusting in pieces!
This guy’s narrations are so boring. 😂
Someone should explain b-roll to him…
I get the enthusiasm. I wish the railfans/foamers would stop making these kinds of videos. There's so much information you're not aware of. You only have bits and pieces of the story. You're not doing anyone any good by telling partial biased truths. I'm an in the field union officer and there is so much more than the story you tell.
While I respect your position and opinion, I know more than you give me credit for since you don't know me at all. I've said that there are positive points to PSR on many occasions. However, this video is titled "When PSR Goes WRONG." And everything I said in it is true. And as long as I'm responding. While there are good points to PSR, I've seen many more bad points to it as I used to work WITH the railroads and have spent countless hours around them as well as listening to the radio. As I've also pointed out in the past.
@@Trains21 I work for the railroad also, I rather have you railfans guys make videos and take photos , than dealing with having rocks and bricks thrown at my train or even being shot at which has happened to me. And on another note, PSR is a bad joke as far as I am concerned, the railroads might never recover the market share that has been lost!
@@mrjsanchez1 Okay, but I've never thrown a rock or a brick at anyone nor have I ever pulled a gun on anyone. And anyone who has thrown things at you are not railfans. They're vandals and delinquents. And personally, I'd rather viewers who disagree with something I say take the time that it takes to make a video response of their own (I'll watch it), than leaving negative comments on my channel which I get all of the time. The difference is, I don't complain about it on other people's channels. I keep it to myself and cope with it on my own .
@@Trains21 I am a railfan myself, I just think it is kind of silly when railroaders complain about railfans, when we have others who are actually trying do do damage and harm to trains and crews, I do enjoy your excellent videos, Have a Merry Christmas! PS, One thing I find amusing is that I learn more about what is going with the railroad I work for from Railpace Magazine, then I do from management.
@@Trains21 I'm not in favor of PSR, at all, as a business model. Yet if you don't work within it each and everyday, sometimes 60 hrs. per week, you don't really understand what's going on. Working near, or around the railroads isn't the same as BEING a railroader and having to live with these policies and procedures day in and day out.
NS has helper units at Cresson PA, why don't they have them there?
I'm curious about the Conrail coal gons, they still have the CR reporting marks. Does that mean Conrail is still in existence?
Norfolk Southern owns the CR reporting mark but YES, Conrail does still exist as a terminal operation in Detroit, North Jersey/NYC and South Jersey/Philadelphia.
Conrail is still around it now a shared assets company. They do switching operations for both NS and CSX. Most cars that still bare the Conrail name are no longer owned by the company they just haven't been renumbered or repainted yet.
@Donald Norfleet From what I understand CSX is phasing out the NYC numbering and replacing them with CSXT numbering. It’s weird seeing boxcars in original Conrail paint with complete Conrail logos and CSXT marks.
@@PM08203 no, CSAO has an industrial branch off of The ACL and the whole of CSAO south Jersey splits off right after the Delaware river. NJDOT/NJ Transit Took over the line in the 80’s / 90’s after Amtrak decided they didn’t want to run it.
@@Poopsock14 the short line I was referring to operates on the Pleasantville Industrial Track.
Ditch PSR tbh